


Aere Perennius

by lucidown



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Voldemort Wins, BAMF Draco Malfoy, BAMF Harry, Creature Harry, F/M, M/M, Non-magical Harry, OOC Harry, Powerful Harry, Sandman Slim Crossover
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-02
Updated: 2017-07-22
Packaged: 2018-04-07 06:56:27
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 18
Words: 42,508
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4253706
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lucidown/pseuds/lucidown
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Harry Potter left Earth when Voldemort hit him with the Killing Curse. Nothing can resurrect the dead, but that doesn't mean those cast to the Underworld can't come back. After six years, Harry is back, and he's back with a vengeance.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Strange Magic

**Author's Note:**

> This fic is inspired by the Sandman series by Richard Kadrey. I do not own any rights to this or to Harry Potter. This is merely a transformative work.
> 
> *I have altered this story a bit so if you have been following it, please go back and read the earlier chapters again for changes.**

Harry woke up on a pile of smouldering rubbish in the old Loughlan Cemetery behind the Anglican church off Brighton Boulevard, though those last details wouldn't come to him until later. At that moment, all he knew was that he was back in the world and he was on fire. His mind hadn't quite kicked in yet, but his body knew enough to roll off the burning trash and to keep rolling until he couldn't feel the heat anymore.

When Harry was sure he was out, he struggled to his feet, brushing powdery snow off himself as he stood. He ran his hands over his lower back and legs. There was no real pain and all he felt were a couple of blisters behind his right knee and calf. The jeans were a little crispy, but the thicker material of his jumper had protected his back. He wasn't really burned, just singed and in shock. He probably hadn't been on the fire too long but he was lucky that way. Always has been. Otherwise, he might have crawled back into the world and ended up a charcoal briquette in his first five minutes home. And wouldn't the guards Downstairs have laughed when he ended up right back where he started after slipping away so quietly out the back door? 

Fuck 'em. He was home and he was alive, if a little torn up by the trip. No one said birth was easy, and rebirth would have to be twice as hard as that first journey into the light.

The light.

Harry's body wasn't burning anymore, but his eyes were cooking in their sockets. How long had it been since he had seen sunlight? Downstairs, it was a dim, perpetual crimson-and magenta twilight. He couldn't even tell the colours of the cemetery where he was standing because his vision went into an agonizing whiteout every time he tried to open his eyes.

Squinting like a mole, he ran to the shade of a column and crouched there with his forehead on the cool marble and his hands over his face. He gave it a good five or ten minutes before lowering his hands to let his eyes get used to the bloody-blue light that seeped through his lids. 

Little by little, over the next twenty or so minutes, he opened his eyes, letting in minute amounts of glaring sun. He mentally crossed his fingers and hoped that no one saw him hunkered down against the pillar. If they did, they would probably think he was twice round the bend and call the law, and that would really throw a wrench into the whole getting out of prison thing.

The muscles in his knees and legs started aching before he could open his eyes all the way and keep them open so he sat down in the snow against the cool column to take some of the strain off. Though he could sort of see now, there was no way he would be marching off into full daylight for a while. Instead, he stayed in the shade and took stock of things.

His clothes are burned, but wearable, if you ignored the burning rubbish smell. He had on a grey T-shirt, worn jeans with holes in various parts of them, a pair of dirty trainers, and a dark red zip-up jumper. His glasses were nowhere to be found but he didn't imagine he needed them anymore. He was wearing the exact clothes he had been wearing when he died. 

When he'd hit the pavement Downstairs he had been naked. That got him his first big laughs, stumbling around trying to find his footing before vomiting in front of an audience of the dead. After that, the laughs were mostly about his physical abuse and humiliation at the hands of one tormentor or another. He was a good authority on this: the Underworld was a tough room.

It had been a long time since he'd seen those clothes. He went through his pockets to see if there was money or anything useful. There wasn't much. Nothing in the pockets except for the golden snitch that used to hold the Resurrection Stone, twenty-three silver Sickles, four fat gold Galleons, and...a wand. 

A surge of nostalgia flooded through him as he pulled out the smooth dark stick to examine it. Draco Malfoy's wand to be specific, and in good order considering it had spent Merlin knows how long stuffed up the asshole of creation. He hadn't even considered the possibility of magic for so long it seemed inconsequential, minute in the face of everything else. 

He waved the wand precisely at a nearby stone and muttered a long-forgotten spell. Nothing happened. He shook his head and sighed before slipping the wand back into the inside pocket of his jumper. Too much to hope for, getting his magic back along with his life. Nothing to be done for it though.

Harry felt just above his right ankle and a genuine wave of happiness hit him. The black blade was still there, strapped to his leg with strips of basilisk leather. He put his hand over his heart and felt the chain under his T-shirt and the slim silver Scientia coin that hung there. The fact he was on Earth at all meant that he still had the Key, even if he couldn't touch it or see it. 

So, he managed to smuggle three things back with him from the Underworld. That was no small feat. Of course, it didn't alter the fact that he had no useful money, no identification, no means of transport, his clothes were half burned off, he didn't have a place to stay and no real idea of where he was, except for the fact that it felt like Muggle London in the middle of winter.

He made his way slowly, still half blind, to the front gates of the cemetery. Near them, he cupped his hands in the icy water flowing from the top of a fountain. He took a drink and splashed water on his face. It felt cool and perfect and right then it hit him. This wasn't some illusion, a glamour or some game designed to crush my spirit. He was really home.

So where the hell was everyone? Outside, he caught sight of one thing he'd been hoping to see. North from where he was standing, in the distance, were the lines and lights of the London Eye. Glinting obscenely bright in the winter sun, it didn't help much in terms of orientation, but it did confirm for him his location. London. In the other direction, a car hissed by every now and then, but there were far too few, and there were no people on the street at all. There were some small houses off at an angle from the cemetery gate. The tiny, snow-covered lawns were decorated with lights, plastic reindeer, and inflatable snowman. Wreaths on a few doors across the street and...

Holy shit, it's Christmas. 

For some reason, that struck Harry as the funniest thing in the universe and he stood there laughing like an idiot.

Someone slammed into him hard from behind. The hilarity ended abruptly. He spun around and found himself face to face with a young business type Muggle. Handsome, with a haircut and jacket that dripped wealth. 

Where the hell did he come from? Harry thought. I've got to shape up. Downstairs, no one would have been able to creep up on me like that.

The man took a couple of stiff steps back. "What the fuck?" he yelled, like it was Harry's fault he'd walked into him. It was cold out, but he was sweating like a racehorse and his movements were quick and jerky, like a broken children's toy. He looked at Harry like he'd killed his dog.

"Calm down, yea?" Harry said. "You ran into me." 

The Muggle wiped his upper lip with the back of his hand. There was something tucked in his palm, but he was so twitchy he dropped it. He started to lunge for it, but took a step back instead. Lying in the snow between them was a plastic bag with about a hundred little ice-white rocks of cocaine inside. Harry recognized the drug from Downstairs, when the higher level tormentors would flash it around and remind everyone just how hard it was to get down there.

He looked back at the guy, but before he could say anything, he'd reached into his jacket. Harry latched onto his arm just as the weapon came out. Gun, his mind supplied, providing him with a rapid-fire information blast as well. He snapped his wrist back and twisted outward, taking the guy off balance and slammed him hard onto the pavement. He didn't even think about it. He just reacted. 

Guess some part of my brain must still be working right.

The guy wasn't moving. He'd gone down on the gun and it was still jammed into his ribs. Harry kicked the thing away and touched the side of his neck. Even out cold, his pulse was fast. Who said crack wasn't good for you? He was wearing a small Christmas tree pin on his lapel. This made Harry think about Christmas more, about being where he was with nothing and how he could use a Secret Santa of his own. He figured that his new friend was about as close to a Good Samaritan as he was likely to find outside a cemetery off Brighton. He quick checked to see that the street was still clear, pocketed the gun, and then dragged him into the cemetery, behind some hedges.

Turned out, the guy was better than Santa. His soft leather wallet was fat with Muggle money, at least a few thousand worth. Harry shut his eyes against the onslaught of Muggle currency information suddenly flooding his brain and shook his head when it stopped. Even though the twitchy son of a bitch was so ripped on coke and paranoia that he tried to execute him for nothing more than standing on the street, Harry felt a small twinge of guilt as he rifled through his pockets. He'd done a lot of nasty things in his time Downstairs but he'd never mugged anyone. Not that it was technically a mugging since the guy attacked him. 

Besides, I need this stuff. I'm back with nothing. No friends that I know are even alive and no real plan.

Harry helped himself to his cash, his sunglasses, a pack of Black Black gum, and his jacket, which was a little big across the shoulders but not too bad a fit at all. He left him his half-burned jumper, his credit cards, car keys, and the big bag of Christmas crack. He would just add the incident to the ever-growing list of sins he would have to atone for later. Ten minutes back and he was already adding to the bill.

He cracked open the pack of caffeinated gum and chewed a piece as he walked. He couldn't seem to get the taste of burning rubbish out of his mouth.

It felt like he was walking on someone else's legs, wobbly and disconnected. He tripped over a couple of curbs and almost jumped out of his skin when he stepped on a squeak toy some kid must have left in the street before it snowed. But the blood started flowing and his legs started feeling like part of his body again. Other than that, he was not walking with any purpose or direction. He wanted to go home, but that word had never held a lot of meaning for him. The only place he could think of in London that met a semblance of home was Grimmauld Place but he had nowhere near enough information to venture there yet.

Walking deeper into the city, he passed Tanbray Avenue and saw a funny sign flanked by sparkling wands. Strange Magic, it said. He recognized the name. It was an animated fantasy film with a comedic twist. He saw it when he was Downstairs. The dead stole cable. Who knew?

Strange Magic was cool and dim inside, and Harry found he could take off Crackhead's sunglasses without wanting to faint. There were old posters on the black-painted walls, but behind the bar it was all swirls of colour, supposedly representing magic. Witch hats, and black cauldrons for peanuts decorated the bar top. There was no one in the place except for the bartender so Harry grabbed a stool at the end of the bar, farthest from the door.

The bartender was slicing up limes. He paused for a second to give Harry a nod, the knife loose and comfortable in his right hand. That other part of Harry's brain kicked in, sizing him up. He had close-cropped dark blonde hair and a strong jaw. He looked big under his button-up shirt. an ex-football player. Maybe military. He realized he was looking at him.

"Nice jacket," he said. His accent was American.

"Thanks."

"Too bad the rest of you looks like you just dropped out of Hell."

Suddenly Harry was wondering if this was some sort of setup, and if he could reach the gun or his knife in time. The guy must have seen it on his face because he gave Harry a big grin and he knew that he was kidding.

"Relax, man," he said. "Bad joke. Looks like you had a shitty day. What are you drinking?"

He wasn't sure how to answer that. Yesterday, he had been hunting for water that sometimes dripped through the ceilings of certain caves. Mostly, he drank the local brew called Aqua Regia, a kind of high octane red wine mixed with Underworld herbs that made cocaine seem like Pop Rocks. 

"Ogden's," he opted for a familiar label.

"On the house," said the bartender, and poured a double. "Normally, I'd have to ask for ID but you look like you need it and I doubt anyone's coming in today to check out the place."

Harry smiled his thanks and took a sip of the spicy liquid before he thought of something.

"You have today's paper?"

The man reached under the bar and dropped a folded copy of The Londoner in front of him. He picked it up, trying not to look too eager. He couldn't even read the headlines. Couldn't focus on anything but the date at the top of the page.

Six years. He had been gone six years. He was seventeen when he went Downunder. Made him twenty three now but he guessed he still don't look his age.

"You from around here?"

"Kind of. I used to live around here, but I've been away."

"Business or pleasure?"

"Incarceration."

He smiled again. A normal one this time. "In my reckless youth back in the States, I did six months for boosting cars." He looked Harry up and down. "You don't look old enough to have done any hard time, kid. What were you in for?"

Harry momentarily flashed back to the last moment he was on Earth, heart racing as he stared down the Elder Wand seconds before Voldemort ended his life. "Nasty shite likes to follow me around. Mostly wrong place, wrong time, really wrong company."

"Sounds like a hoot. So why'd you come back?"

He cocked his head slightly, pondering his question. "I'm going to kill some people," he told him. "Probably a lot of people."

The bartender picked up a rag and started wiping glasses. "Guess someone's got to."

"Thanks for understanding."

"I figure that at any given time, there's probably three to five percent of the population that are such unrepentant rat-fuck dickwads that they deserve whatever they get."

He was still wiping the same glass. It looked pretty clean to Harry. "That percentage is even higher these days. Besides, I get the feeling you might have your reasons."

"That I do, Dean."

He stopped wiping. "How did you know my name was Dean?"

Harry froze. "You must've said it."

"No, I didn't."

Harry looked quickly over Dean's shoulder, at the wall behind the bar, searching for something to provide backing for his slip up. "That trophy on the top of the cash register. 'Dean, World's Greatest Boss.'"

"You can read that from there?"

"Apparently." He groaned internally. He had to keep a tighter lock on the Scientia flashes. Muggles especially would get wrong footed if he kept that shite up.

"What do I owe you?"

"On the house."

"Are you this nice to every aspiring assassin who wanders in here?"

"Only the one's who look like they just crawled out of a burning building and didn't even get their jacket dirty. And I like repeat business. Maybe now you'll come back sometime."

"You want someone who, like you said, 'just dropped out of Hell' as a regular?"

"I'd love it." He looked away, like he was trying to think of the next thing to say. "You've been away. London isn't the same place. It's darker, dangerous. Things...happen that shouldn't and people who see go missing. There are these people. Weird clothes. Strange manner about them. They come around, wanting money for protection. A lot more money than I can afford with a little bar like this."

"And you think I can do something about them."

"You're young but you look like someone who might know what to do in a situation like this. Who wouldn't be..." That look again, groping for words. "You know...afraid."

Harry could tell that was really hard for him to say that. Big macho guy like him, afraid of an apparent gang, must have been a hit to the ego. Especially since he was asking him, a kid, for help. The description of the members was intriguing though, as was the new depiction of London. Definitely a hint that the war was still raging, mostly invisible to Muggle eyes but damaging the world none the less.

"Do these men happen to have matching tattoos on their forearms?" Harry asked, controlling his interest.

He started wiping glasses again. "Wouldn't know. They wear long cloaks. They come in on Thursdays, if you want to see for yourself."

Harry nodded, downing the dregs of his drink and getting up to head to the door. He lifted a hand in salute to Dean as he walked out and got a nod in return. 

Turned out, he didn't need the shades for long. It must have been later in the day then he thought when he went into Strange Magic. As he left, the sun was almost down and lights were coming on all along the Avenue.

He counted to six as he walked deeper into the city, heading nowhere in particular, the coin providing random flashes of information whenever he encountered something new. Six parking meters. Six men standing outside six bars smoking six fags. Six actors in six posters for six films he'd never heard of.

Six years. Six goddamn years and he was home with a Key and a pocketknife and a coin that wouldn't buy him a cup of coffee.

Gone six years and he made it back on Christmas. 

Is someone trying to tell me something?


	2. Something Wicked

Harry got the feeling pretty quick that Dean knew what he was talking about when he said London was a darker place than he used to know. He wandered further into the belly of the city and discovered that streets he knew once to be packed and lively were nearly deserted. He passed one older man who, upon seeing him, squeaked and nearly broke speed records in his effort to cross the street and get away from him. Harry watched his tense shoulders retreat for a moment before shaking his head and carrying on. 

He walked semi-aimlessly, keeping an eye out for anything interesting while simultaneously browsing the various small hotels along this street. He was getting pretty tired, it had been a particularly eventful day after all. He passed by yet another darkened alleyway when he heard a short yelp. He froze, backed up a pace, and squinted into the darkness. Shadows were moving at the far end of the alley. Two shadows, definitely struggling against one another. 

He chewed on his bottom lip, contemplating the situation. On the one hand, he really wanted to lie down and sleep for the next decade but on the other hand...he sighed as his decision was made for him when the smaller shadowy figure let out another high pitched scream.

He walked slowly down the middle of the alley toward the pair, checking the darkness to make sure there weren't others lurking there. The pair shifted slightly and Harry could see them in the light from a high up window. The man, the larger shadow, was pressing his hairy forearm against the young woman's throat. She was scrabbling at his meaty arm and trying to rake her fingernails across his face but he was quick. Grabbing both her wrists in one of his hands, he pinned them to the brick wall above her head and removed his arm from her throat. She was sobbing openly now, not bothering to scream anymore as the man continued to paw at her clothes. Harry had seen enough.

"Evening, out for a stroll as well?"

The man started and twisted slightly to face him but he didn't release the girl. Harry stopped where he knew the guy could see him, just close enough to show his intentions. The guys smirked when he caught sight of him.

"Run along, kid. 'S'not any business of yours."

Harry sighed and ran a hand through his shaggy hair.

"It's Christmas, good will is everyone's business. Have you had a merry Christmas? Did you sing 'Happy Birthday' to baby Jesus? Maybe pick up something for a special someone?"

Harry could tell he was getting on the guy's nerves but he hadn't pissed him off enough for him to turn his attention to him yet.

"Know what I did for Christmas Eve? I cut a monster's head off. Then I did the same thing to the guy who owned the monster. Did you do anything special?"

Harry's stomach flipped in anticipation when the guy finally dropped his grip on the girl and turned to face him fully. She sobbed once before taking off away from the two down the remainder of the alley. 

"You got a big mouth, kid. Might have to shut it for you."

Harry took a baby step closer to the guy and the guy took one back. Then he did the funniest thing. He raised his hand and there was a gun there - a .45-caliber Colt Peacemaker. Wyatt Earp's favourite gun. While information poured into his head lightning fast about the piece, the guy gave Harry five of the six slugs in the chest and belly, completely ruining his evening.

He dropped to his knees, vision going dark before he crumbled completely. He could feel his lungs drawing in air. He could feel his heart beating. Both organs seemed more than a little confused by what was happening. Death was settling over him, soft and warm, like a down comforter freshly cleaned. His heart stopped.

Harry realized something funny while he was Downstairs. He was hard to kill. Not that he wasn't before, having apparently survived Death once as a baby, but it was out of control. When he first arrived there, he wasn't dead. He had apparently been sent down by the Killing Curse but due to some earlier maneuvering on his part, it hadn't been able to kill his soul. So there he was, the first and only living human to ever set foot in the Underworld. He was a new toy, a sideshow freak. Later, when the enforcers got tired of slapping him around, examining him, and displaying him like a pedigreed poodle, they thought it might be fun to watch him die. They made him fight in their arena and they made a big deal out of it.

Naturally, the location being the Underworld and the setting being an arena, there was a lot of cheating going on. The dead don't like losing bets any more than the living. Before almost every fight, a bribed guard would show up with a sneaky little gift. They slipped him special weapons. They gave him special drugs. It all helped, though it didn't make him invincible. He was knifed and speared. He was burned. He was almost torn in half by a giant crab-thing that bled fire and screamed in the anguished voices of all the souls it had devoured. His ribs and skull were beaten to Silly Putty.

But he didn't die.

Harry don't know if it was the maneuvering, the Aqua Regia, or just clean living, but he was changing. Every time he should have died but didn't, he got stronger. That meant that the next attack had to be harder, faster, even more ferocious than the one before. After a while, he actually looked forward to the beat-downs. Each one changed him and that change meant that he was immune from a similar attack next time. By the end, he was a flesh-and-bone, armour-plated killing machine.

By the time the ruling-class, old-school enforcers decided it was time to get rid of him, it was too late. He was too strong and by then he was doing more interesting things than killing in the arena, and that meant he was protected from on high by forces far darker than your run-of-the-mill deados.

On the other hand, he had never been shot before.

Harry's eyes flicked open and his left hand shot to the side, grabbing the .45's still-warm barrel and driving it into the ground. The guy's finger was still looped in the trigger guard, so he came down with the gun. Meanwhile, Harry's right hand flickered down to his ankle and tore free the black bone knife. He twisted his body toward the guy and brought the knife down in a smooth arc. His head tumbled to the ground and rolled away like a pumpkin. His body flopped to the pavement.

Harry rolled his neck and took a deep breath, standing up on shaky legs before heading out of the alley. He didn't even look over his shoulder to check that the knife had done it's job. He trusted that it did and even on the off-chance the body didn't vanish, he really couldn't care less.

He pulled Crackhead's jacket tightly around himself as he walked up to the first motel he found, wincing slightly as he did. Ribs must have been broken by the bullets. Oh well, he had seen worse, but he didn't need the clerk seeing the blood and bullet holes and calling the law. 

Apparently, he looked almost as bad as he felt because the spotted kid behind the counter just stared with wide eyes as he handed Harry a keycard while he handed over some bills.

The room the card unlocked was not large but it would do. A nice big window let in the light from a streetlamp that illuminated the furniture. There was a bed, neatly made with crisp white sheets, a couple of uncomfortable looking chairs arranged around a table, a television and a door that Harry assumed led to the bathroom.

He pulled the gun out of his pocket and chucked it on the table before sitting down on the bed. He was exhausted and he was in pain. It had been an eventful day. He landed here with nothing and he ended up with a nice new jacket and a pocket full of money. He even have somewhere to sleep and wash his face. 

Woo-hoo.

He stretched out full on the bed. He wanted to go and wash off the blood that was drying on his belly and chest, but when he tried to stand, his cracked ribs shot to the top of his pain threshold and convinced him that it could wait a bit. The moment his head hit the pillow, he was out.


	3. Hurting Idiots

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So sorry I didn't update for a while but I suck at fight scenes and I wanted to get it right. Cheers!

Harry snapped awake at the sound of a door slamming down the hall. He sat, up, relieved that the pain in his ribs was gone. The good feeling was short-lived, however, when he realized that the room looked like a bad night in a slaughterhouse. The bloody jacket and shirt were still on the floor where he dropped them. He was covered in dried blood, a lot of which he had managed to smear in a crimson Rorschach blot all over the bed while he was asleep. 

He tossed the jacket and shirt onto the dirty sheet and threw the covers over the mess. By the time housekeeping found the slaughter he would be long gone.

In the bathroom, he peeled off the rest of his bloody and/or burnt clothes and hopped in the shower where he wasted an unknown amount of time watching the water turn red. A shower was a simple pleasure too often taken for granted and he figured he was due so he took his time.

He stepped out and stared at his reflection, dripping onto the peeling laminate floor. He hadn't seen himself since before he went Downstairs and looking straight into his own eyes seemed daunting so he started with his chest. 

The bullet wounds were just black welts surrounded by psychedelic-blue-and-purple bruises. If he twisted the right way, he could feel the .45 slugs nestled inside him, like marshmallows in Jell-O salad. He sighed. 

I'll probably have to do something about getting them out at some point. But not now.

His gaze worked its way up his chest, noting the locket-shaped burn above his heart. The last time anyone had bothered to comment on his appearance, he had been described as scrawny, lean and small for his age. But that was before. The Underworld had helped him build some serious muscle. He would never be bulky, but he looked strong and slightly imposing now. Whatever changed him also apparently gave him some extra height because he stood at least five inches taller than he used to. 

Having exhausted his options for anywhere else to look, he took a deep breathe and looked at his face. He watched his eyes widen slightly and his eyebrows rise as he considered himself. 

Harry raised a hand to his cheek and leaned forward to investigate the changes closer. His jet black hair was still messy, but almost artfully so and it was longer, brushing the nape of his neck and falling over his forehead. His face was harder to recognize. It had narrowed and his cheeks had sunken slightly. His chin was more angular and his cheekbones were higher and more defined. The biggest change though, were his eyes. His mother's eyes, which he always remembered being green like emeralds with a slight spark of laughter and kindness behind them were unrecognizable. The green had brightened to rival the Killing Curse and it was laughable to think there might ever have been laughter or kindness anywhere in them. His gaze was cold, calculating and vindictive even as he stared at himself. His eyes betrayed where he had been for the last six years and all that he had done to survive. They betrayed what he had become. 

A twinge of an almost unrecognizable emotion hit him. He shook his head when he placed it. Sadness. He felt sadness for the first time in six years as he remembered the boy he used to be. Chuckling darkly, Harry turned back to the main room and realized he had another problem. The only clothes that he had were now covered in blood. His nose wrinkled at the thought of putting them back on his freshly cleaned self. 

He grabbed the motel phone and dialled the front desk.

"Yello?"

"Hey, mate. I'm in room eight and I'm in a bit of a jam. The bird I saw last night apparently thought she'd take the mickey so she took off with my clothes."

The clerk chuckled and clicked his tongue. Harry could almost hear him rubbing his greedy hands together.

"Girls are bonkers mate but what do you want me to do 'bout it?"

"Saw a store across the street when I checked in. Pick me up some jeans and a jumper and there's three hundred in it for you."

"Done. Room eight, yea?"

He didn't even wait for a response before the line went dead. Not even ten minutes later he was at the door. Harry slung a towel around his hips and answered. It was the same clerk from last night. Harry checked the bag he passed him before pressing three bills into his open hand and slamming the door.

Harry pulled out the clothes and it turned out the clerk had done him one better than he asked. He now had a plain black t-shirt, a thin zip-up jumper and a pair of dark jeans. The jeans were a little short and the jumper a tad loose but, hey, who was he to complain?

He re-strapped his knife to his ankle to make sure it was secure before stashing Crackhead's gun in the floor vent. No one would find it there for a while at least. He didn't need it and he was not too keen on the thing after last night. He rooted through the bloody pile of bedsheets and found the jacket. He needed Draco's wand. He wanted to return it to him.

He patted his chest to double-check the Scientia coin before he left the room. He stopped off quickly at the desk to return his key to the clerk. As Harry turned to leave, he noticed the flip calendar on the desk that displayed the date. It was Thursday. Dean mentioned the strange gangsters came around on Thursdays. His lips quirked up in a small smirk. 

Definitely time to get this show on the road.

A delivery van was pulling away from the curb outside of Strange Magic. Harry went in and saw stacks of whiskey in boxes, steel beer kegs, and Dean by the bar, surrounded by three men wearing long dark robes. One was Antonin Dolohov, Harry recognized him immediately even though it had been six years. The dark scar under his right eye was a dead giveaway. Harry didn't recognize the other two but he could only assume they were newer recruits. One was slim with long red hair tied in a ponytail and the other, a huge skinhead, had only one eye. His assumption was right, Death Eaters.

Dolohov jerked his head toward Harry. "We're closed!"

"Just a quick one, sweetheart," he quipped. "So I know you love me."

Dolohov pulled out his wand and pointed it at Harry, smirking. Quicker than he could react, Harry scooped up one of the beer kegs and underhanded it to him. It slammed into his chest and knocked him clear across the room. His wand flew out of his hand and landed on the floor somewhere near the bar.

The shaved monocular ape started across the room at Harry while the redhead pulled his wand from his sleeve and fired a curse. He had terrible aim, and it shattered a bottle behind Harry. Just to make things fun, he went straight for the one with the wand. This confused the ape, who was either too stupid or too slow to grab his own wand, and he turned just as Harry reached his pal. It had been a long time since he had gone up against a human, not counting the rapist from last night, so Harry didn't know if he was really fast or if these geniuses were just really slow, but he slipped past the redhead's wand before he could try again and popped him in the elbow, hyperextending the joint just enough to hurt, but not to snap. While little birdies were still flying around his head, Harry grabbed his arm and do-si-doed around him, swinging him into the ape just as he came up behind him.

But the ape was too huge to go down. He staggered back a step then lunged at Harry, faster than he expected. Fast enough to get hold of his shirt and throw a fist as hard as a tire iron into his jaw. Harry didn't want to get into a real fight with this guy because he was more interested in his recovering partner with the wand. When he loaded up for another punch, Harry grabbed one of the squat, bottom-heavy cauldrons off the bar and smashed it into the side of his head. That sent him staggering back to the opposite wall, where he slid down like a pile of bloody laundry.

The redhead was back on him. He had just enough brains to know not to mess around so he was trying to end Harry quickly with a low slashing attack. His arm blurred back and forth, then down, then up, trying to catch him off guard and cut him. Harry parried his attack, letting a slash land on his shoulder or forearm occasionally. He was working up a pretty nice sweat, coming at him with all he had but he was getting frustrated. He swore and spit before Harry sensed a tougher curse on his lips. 

Time to wrap things up. 

As he brought his wand down and the curse dropped, Harry reached up with his right hand and grabbed it. There was a familiar ache, like electricity and heat, as the curse sliced deep into his palm. He slammed the heel of his left hand up under his jaw, staggering him, then twisted his right hand, snapping his wand cleanly in two. As a last ditch effort before he fell, he tried to take Harry down with his weight. He went low and yanked out his knife, letting the man roll off his back and shoving the blade deep into his femoral artery as he went down. He would be dead in minutes.

Damn, it felt great to hurt idiots.

Neither of them were getting up for a minute, so Harry looked around for Dolohov. He was slumped, stunned but conscious, against the far wall with the keg still on his chest. Harry scooped up his wand and squatted down next to him, smacking his cheek. His eyes snapped to attention.

"I've got a favour to ask of you and I'll ask nicely the first time. Put up the Mark."

He sneered and spit at Harry, who sighed. Drawing Draco's wand from his pocket, he twirled it carelessly in his fingers as he started talking again.

"I have to ask, Dolohov. Are nasty tasks like this punishment for failing him six years ago? You and a few of your buddies were sent to grab me and my friends. We got away from you."

A flicker of confusion passed across his face before he snarled at him again. Harry smirked.

"Don't recognize me do you? How's this?"

He pulled his fringe back, exposing the lightning bolt scar that had stubbornly remained adorning his forehead. Dolohov's eyes widened and the blood drained from his face entirely. Harry dropped his fringe and pressed Draco's wand under his chin, an empty threat but he didn't know that.

"I'm not the same scared little boy I was and even back then you lot were scared of me. I won't ask again. Cast. It." 

He swallowed audibly and nodded. Harry pressed his wand into his hand but he didn't remove the one from under his chin as he pointed it out the window and murmured the spell.

"Morsmordre."

As soon as the ghostly spell exploded into the sky, Harry yanked his wand out of his hand and snapped it easily in two. He then palmed his knife and before another sound could fall from his lips, drove it cleanly into his heart.

The knife's magic crackled and the body vanished instantly from under the keg which fell to the floor with a clang. Harry stood up and went to the window to view the Dark Mark now swirling and twisting in the cloudy sky.

"I'm not even going to ask what the fuck all that was," Dean said from behind the bar.

Harry chuckled and walked over to him, sitting down heavily at the bar.

"Good choice."

Dean nodded toward him. "You're bleeding," he said, handing him a clean bar towel. Harry wrapped it around the hand he used to stop the curse. The hand still hurt, but it would stop bleeding by the time he walked outside.

Dean leant on the bar. "So, what are you? Special Forces? Some kind of ninja?"

"Yeah, I'm the ghost of Bruce Lee. Can I have a shot?" Dean nodded and poured it for him. The moment was still burning bright for him, but it was over for Harry. The rage had gone and now he had the consequences to look forward to. He killed two Death Eaters and injured another although since he didn't pull a wand he couldn't be sure what the fuck he was. He got Dolohov to cast the Mark in broad daylight because he knew that it would draw the Order, or what was left of them. Voldemort wasn't stupid enough to investigate the scene of a curious Mark himself so the worst that would show up would be more cronies. Harry grinned at the idea of more victims.

As he downed the shot Dean poured him, the loud pop of Apparition echoed through the silent street and Harry tensed in anticipation. Heavy boots crunched on the gravel outside before a low male voice murmured a Revealing spell. Having apparently determined no danger, a hooded figure inched carefully into the bar.

In an instant, Harry launched himself across the room at the man. He pinned him against the wall with one arm at his throat and yanked back his hood. Flaming red hair was revealed and Harry grinned immediately at the sight of the familiar, albeit slightly weathered, face. 

George Weasley's eyes were wild as he struggled against the arm that held him. At the sight of Harry's grin, he frowned and studied him but didn't stop fighting. Harry's grin widened.

"What? Don't recognize me, Forge?"

His eyes widened. He immediately stopped struggling. 

"Harry?"


	4. Identification Required

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Short chapter but I will update again soon. You guys are awesome! Keep telling me what you think!

If Harry learned anything Downstairs, it was that the only real difference between an enemy and a friend is the day of the week. It was for this reason that he didn't immediate release George Weasley. Instead, he dropped his arm and pressed hard against his chest, tightening his hold but allowing him to speak.

"Tell me your name."

His brow furrowed. Harry rolled his eyes and pressed harder, pushing him up the wall. His feet lifted off the ground and his eyes widened again. He knew Harry was not fucking around.

"George. George Weasley! Merlin, Harry! You've known me since you were eleven!"

The Scientia coin buzzed contentedly against his chest at the truthful answer and he dropped George to the ground. The redhead leant back against the wall, rubbing his chest and glaring at Harry, who shrugged and smirked.

"Sorry. Had to be sure."

"And how exactly did that alleviate your concerns?"

He waved a hand in dismissal. "Later. Now, we have to get out of here."

He raised a hand to Dean, who nodded back in Harry's direction from where he was tidying up the mess he'd made. Harry grabbed George by his sleeve and yanked him out into the street. Scanning quickly, he spotted a darkened nook and pulled him into it. The idiot was still trying to talk to him.

"Harry? Is it really you? Where..." He slapped a hand over his mouth. Fear shone clearly in the bright blue eyes. Harry gritted his teeth and took a calming breath before speaking evenly and clearly.

"We. Don't. Have. Time. I called you for a reason and it wasn't to catch up out in the open. Take me to the Order, George. Now."

George blinked but nodded once and Harry removed his hand. 

"Your turn. Prove who you are and I'll take you."

Harry sighed. He expected this but they really didn't have time at the moment. He wracked his brain for something that would prove his identity to him.

"You and your twin brother, Fred gave me the Marauder's Map when I was in third year. You told me you nicked it from Filch's office."

He didn't look convinced so Harry pressed on.

"You walked in on me snogging your sister before your brother's wedding. You pulled me into the hall and I thought you were going to hit me but you told me it was alright. You told me about Charlie and how you saw him with his girlfriend in fifth year. You said you recognized the same look on my face that he had on his and you told me it was alright. You told me not to push something I didn't feel. I asked what you meant but you just sort of smiled and left. I didn't know what you meant until months later. You're still the only person who knows that I'm bent."

He was barely finished the last syllable when George grabbed him and pulled him into a hug. Harry tensed but wrapped his arms around him tentatively. He hadn't been touched in any sort of non-threatening manner in years and it was hard to convince himself that it wasn't an attack. He patted George's back awkwardly and breathed a quiet sigh of relief when he released him and stepped back.

The redhead was grinning as he pulled out his wand. Harry froze at the possible threat but he took no notice. Instead he waved it lightly and a slip of paper materialized in the air before him. He pricked his finger on his wand tip, snagged the paper with the bleeding finger and handed it to Harry. Beside the smear of blood, he read loopy handwriting:

The new Order of the Phoenix is located at 11 Grimmauld Place.

Harry raised an eyebrow at the address. George shrugged and set fire to the parchment with his wand. He was still grinning at Harry like an idiot.

"Right under their noses. No one suspects a thing. New Fidelius charm and more wards than we can keep up with. Our Resistance is scattered but we find people occasionally and we need to bring them in. Neville's Secret Keeper. He gave us these so we could get people when we find them. The blood identification was Hermione's idea. So no one untoward would be able to read them if they found them."

Harry nodded and George extended an arm which he took after only a moment's hesitation.

Apparition had not gotten any better in the six years since he had done it. He bit his cheek to ward off the nausea as he looked up at the battered row of houses that make up Grimmauld Place. Number Twelve appeared to have had a large hole blown through the middle of it but the shimmer of magic surrounding it led him to believe it had been hidden from Muggle sight. As George led the way up the steps to Number Eleven, Harry wondered briefly about his ability to see through the Muggle warding. Technically, he wasn't a wizard anymore. He shrugged and dismissed it as yet another oddity.

George was murmuring a complex unlocking charm and a moment later, there was a click and the door swung open. He turned and winked at Harry before stepping through the darkened doorway. Harry followed a moment later, mentally and physically prepping himself for whatever lay inside.


	5. Grimmauld Place

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am so sorry this update has taken so long! I got married last month and then we were in Africa until three days ago so I haven't had access or time to post. Cheers to anyone who's still with me!

The door clicked shut behind them. Harry scanned his surroundings as he followed George done the narrow hallway. 

The place was modelled exactly like its next door counterpart but the atmosphere could not have been more opposite. Number Twelve was dank, dark, full of Black family relics, and always gave one the distinct sensation of being slightly damp. Number Eleven, on the other hand, looked as if the previous owner was an elderly woman who enjoyed cats a little too much. Gaudy picture frames boasting cheery Muggle images hung from every available inch of frilly flowery papered wall. Lining the hallway were knickknack cupboards with every imaginable collectable item adorning their shelves. Harry caught a glimpse of a kitchen through a door as they passed and a dining room table outfitted in a sea green knit tablecloth.

The door at the end of the hall was slightly ajar and voices could be heard from the other side. George beamed brightly at Harry one more time before pushing through the door and speaking loudly.

"It was nothing to bother about. Just a chap trying to get our attention is all. Brought him back with me cause he looked like a friendly one."

Harry rolled his eyes but followed George into the room, still scanning carefully as he dropped himself onto a sofa.

The sitting room matched the rest of the house. It was overcrowded with old overstuffed furniture but no picture frames hung in here. Instead, heavy curtains of varying colours hung from every wall, giving Harry the impression of having entered a genie's bottle.

Only two people occupied the room aside from George, seated together on a rosy pink sofa with papers spread across the coffee table in front of them. Both of them were staring at Harry with furrowed brows. 

The man seemed to recognize him first. Neville Longbottom's dark eyebrows shot up into his hairline and his jaw dropped. He stood up so abruptly he dislodged a stack of file folders and sent them all cascading to the ground.

"Who...?"

Harry grinned. He couldn't help it. It was good to see him.

"That's how you greet a friend after all these years?" He asked, crossing the room and standing beside the sofa George has draped himself over, putting it between himself and the others. "Come on Nev, you know who I am."

It was at this point that Hermione Granger leapt across the coffee table, threw her arms around Harry's neck and promptly started sobbing.

"I-I'd know your v-v-v-v-voice anywhere! H-Harry!"

Harry was biting his tongue so hard he could taste blood in order to prevent himself from reacting unfavourably to this but he couldn't last much longer. He reached up slowly to grasp her wrists and pulled her arms gently from around his neck. He took a mini step back, breathing a sigh of relief before smiling in a manner he hoped was warm down into his old friend's tear-streaked face.

Hermione smiled back through the tears, her watery eyes shining.

"Where have you been, Harry?"

The question came from Neville, who was still standing, file folders scattered around his feet. Harry raised an eyebrow before gesturing at the sofa. "Maybe everyone should sit down. This could take a while."

They lowered themselves slowly back onto the sofa, not seeming to trust that Harry wouldn't vanish if they broke eye contact. He strolled casually across the room and settled into an armchair that looked reasonably comfortable. It wasn't.

"I thought you were dead, Harry," Hermione blurted suddenly, looking at him with tear-filled moon eyes. "We all thought you were dead. I mean, what You-Know-Who did...we thought he killed you."

Harry snorted. "I was alive but in the Underworld for six years, so, yeah, you could say he did. In a way."

At this, George sat up with a confused frown and Neville leant forward, bracing his elbows on his knees before speaking.

"That isn't possible. If you were in the Underworld, then you died. Your soul had to have died. No one goes there and comes back, it just isn't possible."

Harry nodded and leaned back into his uncomfortable chair. "My soul didn't die though. The Killing Curse doesn't kill the body right? It removes the soul and dispatches of it. You can live without your soul, as Dementors have proven, but you can't survive it's destruction. The way I see it, when he cursed me, it killed the Horcrux inside me and my soul went along for the ride to the Underworld."

Hermione's eyes were wide. "But that would mean that you were alive down there. How could you live through something like that? Your soul should have died within hours, Harry."

He shrugged, unwilling to give away his secret. "Listen, I don't know how or why I survived but," he gestured casually at himself, "here I am."

All three of them were looking at him like they weren't sure whether to be afraid or not so he hesitated before continuing.

"There's other things, too. I've keep getting stronger. I can get torn up, cut, ripped apart, and I just get up and walk away." He shrugged again. "I don't really understand what's happened to me."

"You get pulled into the Underworld and six years later you emerge as Superman." Hermione's voice was quiet and hesitant. "That's impossible."

"Superman?" Neville and George asked in unison but Hermione just waved off the question and looked back at Harry.

He sighed. He was sick of that word. Impossible. He was there, so clearly it was possible. "You're the one with all the books. You tell me."

She frowned and her eyes took on the misty quality he recognized from back in school when she was considering a particularly difficult problem.

"Perhaps they cursed you with an inability to die? Or perhaps it's simple biology. You are likely the first living soul to have entered the Underworld. Your condition might be a natural biological response." 

At Neville and George's blank looks, she rolled her eyes. "A side effect of having been in that awful place. Perhaps it's meant to help you?"

Harry shook his head and looked up at the pink ceiling. "I don't trust it. It means something I can't figure out. Or it's a setup. Nothing that happened down there was for my benefit."

When he looked back down, all three of them were looking at him strangely and Hermione looked sad. He raised an eyebrow in question but she just pursed her lips and looked away.

George cleared his throat. "What was it like down there? Did you try to escape? Could your magic help at all?"

Harry chuckled and shook my head. "Our magic doesn't get you much down there. Even when I got stronger physically, I couldn't cast the simplest hex."

"So how did you get out?"

"I was the property of Azazel, one of the...guards I suppose is the word. He made me his designated assassin. He said that...someone...up here, would be protected, unharmed, as long as I played along."

Neville frowned, asking, "Who, Ginny?"

Harry shook his head. "I don't know how I knew something bad happened, but I did. They are in my soul and I can feel what happens to them up here." He let a small smirk play over his features. "Before I left, I cut out Azazel's heart and left it on his altar."

Hermione looked a little green at this and it made him strangely pleased. Good. She was starting to get that he wasn't who he used to be. 

"How did you get out then?"

"Doesn't matter does it?"

A spark in their eyes and a quick glance between the three caused Harry to narrow his eyes in suspicion. What did they want?

When no one spoke, he stood up and rolled his neck. His nerves were fried and he was losing his patience sitting in the surreal cozy house with people he knew in another life. He needed to get moving.

"I'm done talking. I'm here for him. He is poisoning the world and he did this to me." Harry smirked at his audience. "I'm here to pay him back. Do you know where he is?"

The three glanced at each other worriedly. Neville cleared his throat. "Everyone knows where he is, Harry. He never leaves anymore, just sends his Death Eaters out and they do the dirty work. They bring anyone he needs back to see him and...they don't come back out."

Harry grit his teeth and took a deep breathe, trying to calm himself. It might have been the wards on the house, or some other sort of spell keeping the information he sought from him, but the Scientia coin wasn't helping. "Where?"

Neville's frown deepened and he stood up to face him. "You can't just go barging in there, Harry. There are too many of them and they will kill you. Properly this time." He folded his arms over his chest. "We have a spy in their ranks. He's doing good work and with the intelligence he feeds us, we've been forming a plan. Granted, he hasn't reported in a few weeks but with what we have, we should be able to launch a coordinated strike and..."

The look on Harry's face made him stop talking. He had a horrible creeping tendril of dread working its way through his stomach. Neville was about to confirm his suspicions and his heart rate was flying. Harry clenched and unclenched his fists, focusing on the calming sting of his nails when they bit into the flesh of his palms. He closed his eyes and blew out a slow, deliberate breathe. When he opened them again, Neville was looking at him with an expression that he grew extremely familiar with Downstairs. Fear. His old friend was afraid of him and he couldn't help the feeling of satisfaction that crept in. 

He should be.

"Neville," he started calmly and carefully, "Who exactly is the spy?"

He wasn't expecting this question and was taken aback for a moment. He blinked and frowned, reaching for his wand. "Draco Malfoy...why does it...?"

Harry was across the small room before any of them can blink. He caught Neville's wrist that was going for his wand and used it to spin him around, twisting his arm behind his back. He flicked out a foot to catch the backs of his knees and Neville was down on the ground in an instant.

Harry reached into his jumper and drew Draco's wand, pointing it at the back of Neville's head. Hermione and George had both stood up at some point, wands out and pointed at him so extra incentive to stand down couldn't hurt. It obviously worked since they both flinched and stepped back slightly. They didn't have to know that he couldn't use the bloody thing.

Harry leaned over Neville's back, using his weight to put more pressure on his twisted arm as he spoke to all three.

"I am not sure what fucking vacation you think I've been on but let's get one thing straight. I am not your precious Golden Boy. Harry Potter died six years ago. Whoever I was, whoever you all thought I was, I am not anymore. I have been twisted, ripped apart and re-made so many times in the last six years that I only have two things left. My hatred for that fucking snake, and him. If you haven't figured it out by now, I am not fucking around. Tell me where he is."

Hermione whimpered and Harry flicked his head up to glance at her. Her hand was trembling on her wand that was still levelled at his face. The look in her eyes was almost entirely fear but he recognized a hint of sadness as well. She cleared her throat carefully.

"They're at Malfoy Manor. He has been using it as his headquarters for years now."

Harry released Neville, who immediately collapsed to the floor, cradling his arm to his chest. Hermione rushed to check him but George was still holding his wand on Harry as he backed away. Harry grinned and held up his hands in mock surrender as he backed towards the corner of the room.

"No hard feelings?" He glanced at Neville, "Sorry, mate, but you wouldn't have told me otherwise. I'll be back. Put some tea on, yea?"

He took one last step into the corner of the room until he felt the now familiar burning cold licking his ankles. He spun, darting into the shadows and he was gone. Gone into the darkness of the Room.


	6. Malfoy Manor

Harry didn't have much of a temper before he went Downstairs. Maybe he never really needed it up on earth. The first time he felt it was a few weeks after he got tossed into the arena. He kept winning fights. Barely, but he won. This surprised him as much as it did the crowd. Azazel was his owner by then, but he didn't pay much attention to him. Harry's novelty had worn off and waiting for him to get beaten to death was the only amusement he had left to offer. Every time he didn't die it seemed to piss off the handlers Azazel had sent to keep an eye on him.

They always walked him out of the arena in chains, on his wrists, ankles, and neck. It was a joke. Harry could have just killed some poison-spitting Sphinx thing, but he was the wild man-beast that had to be leashed. Underworld humour. Big laughs every time the chains went on.

One night, Baxux, the tallest of his three watchers, got a little frisky with his chains. He held them behind him like reins and whipped him with them like he was a four-pound mule.

There was a half-broken extendable sabre weapon embedded in the dirt floor of the arena. Harry couldn't even remember picking it up, but he must have because all of a sudden Baxux's belly was as open as the Holland Tunnel and his guts were lying at his feet. The crowd went apeshit, which might have been the nicest thing anyone did for him the whole time he was down there. The roar distracted his other two attendants for long enough that he could swing the sabre hard enough for it to extend to its full length, taking off the head of attendant number two with his first swing and one of attendant three's arms with the next.

The bad news was that attendant three still had three arms left and now he was pissed. He leaped on top of Harry, all five or six hundred pounds of him, collapsing the sabre to its noncombat length of about eighteen inches. Then he started pounding him with three big fists like granite jack-o'-lanterns. Every time he set him up for one of his John Wayne haymakers, he pulled his body away from him and up in the air a little, just far enough for Harry to smash the end of the sabre into the ground.

The thing had a spring-loaded mechanism that extended full length in a nanosecond. Well, a working one did. This thing was badly damaged, so it took a dozen good raps on the ground for the thing to go off. When it did, the look on number three's face was almost worth the beating.

He stood up, which was a lucky break. Harry couldn't have lifted the guy off him with a hydraulic jack and dynamite. He stood there swaying and looking down at the shaft of the sabre that now went into his chest and out his back.

Harry whipped the sabre's grip clockwise, which extended thick barbs that bent backward, getting a good grip on his opponent's flesh. Then he pulled. He put all his weight into it and spun his body as he fell back, using the razor edges of the weapon like a drill to open up the wound even wider. The last big pull hit the spring lock that made the thing collapse back into itself. The force knocked Harry flat on his back, but that was all right, because it also pulled out attendant number three's black heart and part of his spine.

The cheers nearly melted Harry's eardrums. He was Hendrix at Woodstock.

But his killing his attendants isn't what taught him that he had a temper or what gave Azazel the idea that he might have the stomach for serial murder. It's what happened next.

Harry piled dead attendant one on the body of dead attendant two, climbed up both of them, and grabbed one of the torches off the arena wall. Fire in the Underworld wasn't like Earth fire. It was more like Greek fire or burning magnesium. It burned long and hot and was practically impossible to put out.

While attendant number three tried to crawl away from where he'd left him, Harry shoved the lit torch into the hole in his chest where his heart used to be. He didn't just have jack-o'-lantern hands anymore. His whole body lit up, burned, and burst like the Hindenburg.

Harry used the sabre to slice through the chains and made a break for the door. Not that he ever had a chance of making it. Twenty armed guards came pouring into the place. He had enough full-tilt crazy left that he killed three or four of them before the sabre flew apart in his hand. It was all country music after that. Those guards square-danced all over him. It was Azazel himself who broke up the party and kept the guards from killing him.

They threw Harry in one of the arena's punishment cells and put a couple of guards on the door. At the time, he thought that was overkill. He was already three-quarters gone. There was no chance he was going to even try to escape. Later, he realized that the guards were there to keep anyone else from getting in and finishing him off. That cell was where Harry realized that he was getting stronger.

He went in there bleeding and slashed, and with his bones sticking out through his skin. Three days later, he could stand up. A day after that, he could walk. His guards didn't like this one bit. When they thought he was asleep, they'd sneak peeks at him through a sliding panel in the cell door. There was something new in their eyes. Harry should have been deader than dead. But he wasn't. They thought he was a monster. And no one bothered him until a few days later when Azazel sent a friendly little homunculus with sweet fruits and Aqua Regia and a request that Harry join him for dinner that night. Naturally, he said yes.

That was the upside of having a temper. The downside was that it made him do stupid things. Like attacking an old friend to get information.

Harry sighed as he slipped into the shadow, immediately regretting his approach. It would make things much more awkward when he got back.

The key tickled inside his chest and he emerged into the Room of Thirteen Doors.

The Room wasn't that interesting, to be honest. It was dark and dank and has thirteen walls with thirteen Doors set into them. That was really it. The only interesting part of the Room were the Doors themselves. Each was moulded out of a different substance and each would take a traveler to a different location. That is, they would if a traveler knew how to use the Room and knew precisely what it is they wanted. If they didn't know how to use the Room and it's Doors, it would probably kill them. Thankfully, Harry did know how.

He took the Door of Light first, emerging on a run-down street with nothing but a no-name indie gas station and a parking lot. He went inside to buy a pack of cigarettes, a lighter, two plastic gas cans, and a T-shirt with Mann's Chinese Theatre printed on the front. He paid for four litres of gas in advance, filled the two cans and headed back into the Room.

He paused for a second, contemplating the Doors each in turn before grinning. Of course. He crossed quickly to the Door of Ice and gently stepped out of the shadow on the other side.

He found himself looking up at an imposing manor house that definitely looked as if it had seen better days. Stones were cracked, paint was peeling and foliage was overgrown. Malfoy Manor. He had emerged from a shadow in a crevice on the east side of the manor, a crevice hidden wonderfully by an overgrown fern. He snuck around the side of the wall to get a look at the front of the house. There wasn't anyone around.

Harry closed his eyes and delved deep to touch that tendril of otherness he had felt within himself for so many years now. He probed it tentatively and it flared gently in response. He grinned. He was alive, and now he knew exactly where he was.

Harry bent down and ripped the T-shirt in half and dipped each piece into one of the cans, letting them soak up the juice. Then he stuffed them in the cans' mouths and headed for the front door. This was probably one of the stupider things he had done but he had never been known for his subtlety.

He lit the rags in each can with his new lighter and knocked on the door politely. The monocular gorilla he had knocked out at Strange Magic pulled the door halfway open with a snort.

"'Bout time you got back. Bloody hell took...?" He froze when he saw Harry, obviously not who he was expecting. 

He reached into his robes in the next moment, but before he could, Harry kicked the door hard, sending it slamming into the half of his body that was standing in the way. He stumbled back a step and out of the doorway and Harry slung the cans underhanded, aiming at the opposite end of the entrance hall.

They exploded, one a fraction of a second behind the other. Flames splashed across the walls like a flood of hellfire. Harry, however, didn't see this. As soon as he threw the cans, he turned tail and ran back around the side of the manor.

He slipped back into the Room and crossed to the Door of Ice, knowing it will take him exactly where he needed to go now.

He stepped out inside the empty fireplace of a large hall. He pressed himself into the shadows and surveyed the room. A long polished wooden table sat in the centre surrounded by chairs, most of which were either on the floor or pushed away haphazardly as their owners had obviously gotten up quickly to vacate them. Harry grinned when he saw how well his little diversion tactic worked but the smile fell off his face when he looked to the head of the table.

He sat there, resting the tips of his deathly white fingers together. He looked calm and collected but from Harry's position he could see his eyes. His eyes betrayed his annoyance and fury that his meeting had been interrupted. Harry clenched and unclenched his hands, breathing carefully to control his impulse to murder the creature on the spot. But he couldn't. The Door wouldn't have brought his to this particular location if he weren't there as well and Harry couldn't risk him. 

Voldemort stood suddenly, running a hand over the polished wood of the table before opening his mouth.

"Ssssssssiaassth. Ssssnassenateth sssssasseeem." 

The hissing continued but Harry shook his head to try to clear it. He had never heard Parseltongue before and it was rather unsettling. The few remaining Death Eaters at the table obviously thought so as well judging by their unanimous cringes. Harry guessed that it was another thing he lost when he was disconnected from Voldemort's soul. 

A large form unraveled from under the table as Nagini made herself known, slithering away from her master. Harry followed her progress with his eyes, looking to the darkened area of the room behind the table. 

Suddenly, a ray of light sliced it's way through a gritty window, illuminating that section of the room. Harry's eyes narrowed and he had to bite his tongue to keep from growling.

Draco Malfoy was dangling from midair by his wrists. He was shirtless and every inch of pale skin that was visible was covered by a stomach turning array of lacerations and burns, some of which looked to be fresh and oozing. His blonde hair hung lank and dirty over his closed eyes. He had fallen forward into his bindings, allowing his wrists to hold up his weight since his bare feet could barely scrape the floor. 

Voldemort sat back down gracefully, snapping his fingers at one of those remaining at the table. The woman looked up, startled. She tucked her straight black hair behind her ear and sat up straighter in her seat, her dark eyes flashing with excitement as she cleared her throat.

"Yes, my Lord?"

"I think you should take young master Malfoy back to his cell. I do believe we tired him out what with all the...fun we all had earlier."

Harry saw the woman glance quickly at one of the others still seated at the table, an older man with closely cropped grey hair, before smirking, standing and making her way over to Draco. She deliberately avoided the corner beside him which a low hiss revealed as Nagini's new hiding place. The woman pulled her wand and slashed downward through the air above Draco's head, severing his bindings and slicing his shoulder open as well as he fell to the floor. He didn't react.

Harry could taste his own blood in his mouth he was biting his tongue so hard. The woman was laughing as Draco crumbled to the ground. 

Harry made sure to smooth his fringe down over his scar and yanked the hood of his jumper up for good measure before grabbing hold of a fireplace poker and stepping out into the room.

He kept his eyes on Voldemort as he snuck along the wall toward Draco. He didn't appear to be paying any attention to the woman but something told Harry that he knew everything she was doing behind him. He would only have a second. 

The woman was now squatting and prodding at Draco's prone form. Harry crossed the last few feet and he was within a breath of her. He watched her wand burn another mark into his neck and he snapped. He leaped from the shadow and slammed his shoulder into her hunched back, simultaneously driving the poker through her rib cage and out her stomach. She crumbled easily under his weight, making a small squeak before falling silent. Harry rolled quickly off her and to his feet but as he did, his chest exploded in pain. 

He fell to his knees and through the pain, managed to look up at the table. The grey-haired man was advancing on him with his wand drawn and fury in his eyes. Voldemort hadn't even flinched.

Harry's ribs felt like they had all been simultaneously broken and ground into powder but he somehow managed to do the only thing he could think of. He grabbed the knife off his calf and slammed the blade down as hard as he could lengthwise into the floor. The room shuddered as an inch-wide crack sliced it in two. It was not exactly a ten-point-oh on the Richter scale, but it made grey-hair stumble and actually drew a reaction from Voldemort, who turned in his seat, eyes narrowed and suspicious. He caught sight of Harry, who managed to smirk through the pain as he stood up shakily.

He had literally seconds to live as he fumbled for Draco's arm, which he knew to be right behind him. Holding his wrist tight, he yanked them both as hard as he could toward the corner Nagini rested in. Harry heard a surprised hiss before the burning cold surrounded him and they landed with a crash on the floor of the Room.

Draco still hadn't moved a muscle and Harry could no longer breathe. He was sure whatever that Death Eater did to him was going to kill him and he didn't have long. He had no idea what might happen if he died in the Room but he didn't want to find out. Yanking Draco's prone form onto his back, he stood shakily and stumbled toward the Door of Fire. Dragons made fire. Fire couldn't hurt dragons. Draco was a dragon. He was vaguely aware of the illegitimacy of that argument but as he pushed through the Door, he couldn't bring myself to care. Anywhere was better than there. 

Harry's last thought as his brain shut down was that grass was itchier than he remembered it being.


	7. Draco

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have had a hell of a time of late so please forgive my absence. I have redrafted this story in a different tense and point of view. Please continue to bear with me :)

Draco watched as his own sharpened fingernail sliced into his wrist. He watched the crimson blood well and trickle down his pale skin. After years of living with the spell, he still wasn't used to the fascination that came from his condition. He pushed the nail in harder before yanking it out and snorting as he examined his work. 

Draco liked to fancy himself a prepared man; he didn't enjoy surprises or unexpected turns of events so he did his best to remove the possibility. Near the end of sixth year, however, something completely unexpected had happened; Harry Potter had come to him for help. The Boy Who Lived had ignored Draco's sneer and jabbing comments and had simply handed him his wand. Draco had been so stunned that he had agreed when the brunette requested he hear him out.

Draco had sat in the Room of Requirement with the other boy for hours, listening as he told all. He learned of the prophecy, Voldemort's horcruxes, and Dumbledore's plans to destroy them. He told him also that Dumbledore was aware of his own predicament, his own assignment to kill him. Draco had been shocked at this but Harry simply smiled sadly and told him about the Headmaster's hand. He had read up on the strange skin discolouration and had discovered that the old man was in fact, dying. When Harry had confronted him about it, Dumbledore had told him of Draco's assignment and his plan to die at Snape's hand in order to save Draco. 

Harry had let him sit and process that information for a while, bringing him a cup of tea, before finally confessing his fears that the Dumbledore was not planning for him to make it through the war. He explained that he did not want to die, did not want to sacrifice the life his mother and father had died for.

When Draco asked what exactly the other boy wanted from him, Harry told of a spell he had found, a spell used to bind living beings. When performed correctly, it merged the soul of two people and harnessed their life force as the ultimate protection. In essence, Harry explained, it made it so that while one partner lived, the other could not die.

Draco had sat stunned for a time before managing to ask his most burning question, why him? Of all the people the Golden Boy could choose to help him with this, he seemed rather low on the list.

Harry had smiled sadly and looked at the top of the scar that peeked over the collar of Draco's shirt, the scar that he had put there only weeks earlier. 

"I almost killed you. I almost took your life. You are the only one who has a claim to my life. Plus," Harry grinned, "if anyone figures it out, as you said, you're the last person they'd expect."

So Draco had agreed, selfishly, for all intents and purposes. He figured a little extra protection couldn't hurt, especially with his current mission, which Harry insisted, he go about as if nothing was different.

And then the night had come. Harry and Draco performed the spell at dusk on the eve of the harvest moon and everything changed. An otherness settled deeply within, an awareness of Harry that Draco understood to be a part of himself now. Looking at his partner, his friend, he realized suddenly, he knew he was feeling the same. They knew without testing it that the spell had worked.

And then came the night when Draco had shown the other Death Eaters his inability to kill Dumbledore. He had been dragged by his aunt away from the castle, away from Harry, and punished horribly. The Dark Lord kept him around for a few more years, thinking him useful at Hogwarts for whatever reason, but long enough for him to see the the battle of Hogwarts, long enough to see his friend dead in the giant's arms. He felt Harry's soul leave the Earth and the pain had nearly torn him apart.

He kept up appearances for another three months before the weight of Harry's absence had gotten to him. He had to do something. So he had gone to the Order, what was left of it, and become their spy. Unfortunately, he wasn't as good at espionage as he had fancied. About eight months earlier, he had been caught returning from a meeting with Granger. with no excuse and no alibi, he had been thrown in a cell underneath his own home.

The Dark Lord had him dragged from the dungeons for a few hours a few times a week...he wasn't sure, he couldn't really keep track. He was stripped to his pants before being cut and tortured for hours each time. He always passed out from the pain and when he woke, he found himself back in the dungeons, caked in his own blood.

The first time, he had been dragged back before the Dark Lord as soon as he woke. Fuming, the man had raised his wand. 

"Explain."

Draco understood what he was being asked: how was he healed, how was he not dead after the torture he had withstood. At Draco's defiant stare, he had cursed him and watched as the blonde twitched and writhed on the floor. He refused to answer until he again passed out under the torture and the Death Eaters again dragged him away.

Every time he was dragged from his cell to face the madman, he was asked the same question. Every time he refused to answer and was tortured for his insolence.

The blood was pouring freely from his arm now, dripping faster and faster onto the filthy stone floor of the cell. Draco slumped against the wall, shaking his head as the black spots appeared in his vision. The roaring sound was back and all the feeling had left both his arms. This was the longest he had remained conscious so far during his experiments and he was interested to see if he could make it through to the end.

His eyes felt heavy as he brought his wrists closer to watch the wounds bleed down his pale skin. Suddenly, the flow stopped, reversed its path and travelled back into his slit veins. Draco watched in dazed fascination as his blood returned to his body and the newest slash healed over.

He blinked, suddenly able to focus again. The roar of death was gone, as were the black spots in his vision. 

Draco scratched a small white mark into the wall next to the others. He sighed and leaned into the stone wall, propping his elbows on his raised knees and dropping his head into his hands.

Draco had "killed himself" now over one hundred and forty seven times. He wasn't sure of the exact number as he hadn't kept count at first, but as the only method of entertainment available to him in the cell, he had attempting to kill himself in every way currently available to him.

Insanely, he thought about an end to the war, being freed from this prison finally and being able to venture out into the world again. He could probably try drowning, as he didn't have any water in here, or maybe try jumping off his broom, that might be interesting.

Draco shook his head and scoffed at himself. Many months ago, he had daydreamed of the war ending, Harry returning from wherever he was and defeating the Dark Lord, somehow, so he could figure out a way to return to his life. Now, he pondered various new ways he could try to kill himself if he were set free.

A loud bang from the end of the hall resounded through the dungeon but Draco didn't bother raising his head. Nott always came down to do a quick scan once a day and no one else ever came or went so he couldn't be bothered. 

Food and water were no longer provided after the Death Eaters had discovered that Draco couldn't die. He hadn't eaten or drank anything since that day. He didn't get hungry, he didn't lose weight, he didn't get dehydrated, and he never died. 

A loud bang right at his door startled him into looking up. Nott stood there, leering through the bars at him as he unlocked the door.

"Up. You're needed upstairs."

Draco rolled his eyes but stood and allowed himself to be yanked out of the cell and dragged roughly down the hall and up the steps to the main house. Might as well.

Moonlight streamed through the grimy windows of the East Hall and Draco shuddered at the thought of what his mother would say about their condition were the circumstances different.

Nott yanked him along by his arm, keeping it bent up behind his back in a manner that Draco guessed was meant to hurt more than it did.

He was pushed firmly into the main hall, falling to his knees. He glared at Nott before looking up and raising an eyebrow as he took in the scene before him.

A meeting was clearly going on. Robed Death Eaters sat rigidly around the table leering at Draco as he was led in. He recognized his father at the far end but the man was staring at the table top resolutely, refusing to look up at his only son.

The Dark Lord sat at his usual place at the head of the table. At a nod from him, Nott led Draco to the far side of the room behind the group. He murmuring a spell and Draco's chained wrists were levitated and secured in the air above his head. His toes barely touched the ground so the new position would probably have hurt a lot had he been able to feel it.

Nott backed away and returned to his seat as the Dark Lord rose to face Draco. He wand held loosely in his hand, he trailed the wandtip across his cheek, slicing into it as he went. Draco gritted his teeth and took it.

His eyes must have betrayed his anger however because the Dark Lord seemed suddenly amused, "Oh. I must have forgotten to mention... Tonight we have business to attend to."

He nodded and a robed figure rose from the table and advanced toward Draco as the Dark Lord continued, seating himself back down and no longer even bothering to glance at his prisoner.

"You see, young Malfoy now makes the perfect test subject for us. He cannot die it seems and as he refuses to explain why, I have decided we can experiment with some of the...more inventive curses to see how they suit us. You see...he can still feel pain."

It became a routine. Every few days, Draco would be dragged out of his cell and brought to the East Hall where the Death Eaters would experiment with various new curses or torture methods. Sure, Draco couldn't die, but they seemed content enough to listen to him scream and bleed and simply see the damage their spells could do. 

Draco figured out very quickly that he needed to remove himself, pull away from his physical body, in order to survive the attacks with his sanity intact. He created a garden for himself, much like his person garden at the Manor but on the shore of the Black Lake at Hogwarts. He loved it there and he began to look forward to his torture sessions as it provided him an excuse to go there. He got so good at the disassociation that he often didn't feel a thing, choosing instead to swim on the shores with the giant squid or weed the flower beds.

It was the routine Draco knew.

On one particular evening, Draco was barely conscious, having just endured a full hour of experimentation. His body had barely enough blood left in it to keep him conscious but apparently not so little that the spell's effects were taking hold to reverse the damage. 

He heard a noise from somewhere far away. It drew his current tormentor along with a number of others from the room. They'd be back. They always came back. He didn't bother even opening his eyes but he could tell his wounds were still bleeding because the darkness was getting heavier.

He heard a presence off to his side and his wrists were released. His body collapsed to the floor, unable to keep itself up. Draco lay in peace for a moment, slipping slowly further and further away.

Suddenly, out of the void, he felt a hand close around his wrist. He instinctively tensed as he waited for the pain he was sure was to follow. None came. He was falling into cold now. His prone form was being yanked and pulled in a way that wasn't pleasant but certainly wasn't the torturous pain the Dark Lord inflicted.

Falling again, onto cold and wet this time. The hand was still wrapped in a death grip around Draco's wrist but the person attached to it no longer seemed to be moving. 

At all. 

Suddenly, the tingling agony of healing began. The hot pain shot through Draco's chest and he rolled onto his back and his eyes shot open in time to watch the numerous gory wounds on his chest and arms close up like zippers. He bit his lip as the familiar fire coursed through his veins. He felt tears stream down his cheeks as he burned from the inside out. Just when he was sure he couldn't take it any more, it stopped. 

Panting, Draco closed his eyes. He felt healthy and alive again.

Now that he was no longer dying, he opened his eyes and lifted his head so he could take stock of his situation. He was lying in a small grove surrounded on all sides by the shadowy forms of trees. The dark of the night prevented Draco from seeing more than a few feet so everything that might have lain out there was obscured by shadow. 

He looked down at himself and grimaced. His only item of clothing was a pair of extremely dirty slacks which were going to have to be burned as soon as possible. His bare feet were caked with blood and black from dirt and grime and his chest was smeared with his own blood. Vaguely, through the maroon smears, he could see the familiar thin silver scar that ran from his left clavicle down to his right hip.

He dropped his head back to the cold ground. Judging from his current position, he had rolled off his companion when they had hit the ground. The man was laying on his front and he still had Draco's wrist locked in his grasp.

Draco shifted slightly to examine his rescuer. The man was pale, with a narrow but handsome face. He had high aristocratic cheekbones and a slightly narrowed chin. His jet black hair was messy, falling over his forehead and into his eyes, obscuring Draco's scrutiny.

Draco cocked his head slightly as he observed the man. He seemed familiar and his presence was stirring something long buried within. He glanced down at the hand still wrapped around his wrist. For whatever reason, he was free. Draco closed his eyes and let himself bask for a moment. He could feel the cold ground under his back and the night breeze that was blowing lightly through the clearing.

His eyes opened again as he sat himself up a bit, careful not to jostle the stranger. The man didn't appear to be breathing but Draco could feel his rapid fire pulse racing where his hand still clutched his wrist. Only two creatures that Draco knew about didn't need to breathe: vampires for one, but they didn't have a pulse; and valkyrie, but they were only ever female. 

More curious by the moment as to the identify of his saviour, Draco reached over with his free hand and, hesitating only for a moment, he swiped the man's hair out of his face.

Vivid, acid green eyes snapped open and before Draco could blink. He was flat on his back again, a strong forearm compressing his windpipe and a knee in his stomach.

He choked and scrambled against the arm instinctively for a moment before lying still. Why waste the energy? 

The man crouched on top of him was looking at him with a lifeless, blank stare. The nothingness in the green eyes chilled Draco but he grit his teeth and met the gaze resolutely. Something flickered through the nothing and the man blinked twice before a horrified expression bloomed. He leapt off of Draco as if he were burned.

Coughing a few times and cracking his neck, Draco opened his eyes to look around for his companion. He was kneeling a few feet away, watching Draco carefully through his bangs while scratching his short nails nervously against the material of his jeans.

Draco carefully arranged his features before pushing himself up on his elbows and raising an eyebrow at the man, voicing his question silently.

"I'm...not used to....." The man sighed and blinked a few times before shrugging. "Sorry."

He was deliberately avoiding Draco's gaze, instead studying the area above the blonde' hip rather closely. Draco narrowed his eyes and cocked his head. He pushed himself up and raised himself carefully to his feet. There was something brutally familiar about this man, a familiarity that was eating his insides and he needed to figure out what it was. He took one step toward the man, who tensed visibly and closed his eyes, worrying his bottom lip between his teeth. Draco froze. He knew that tick. He had watched that tick and its owner with extraordinary scrutiny for six bloody years.

He swallowed before stepping closer to the man. Reaching out a hand slowly, approaching him as he would a startled owl, he gave him plenty of notice and time to react. The man didn't move as Draco approached but the blonde could see him digging his nails into the fleshy undersides of his palms. He stopped in front of the kneeling man and tentatively reached out the final distance to push the messy black hair off his forehead.

Draco sucked in a breath as his suspicions were confirmed and the famous lightning scar came into view. Green eyes were still watching him closely, fear, alarm, and...something else swimming through the depths. He was clearly waiting and preparing for a reaction but Draco just smirked down at his old rival. 

"About fucking time you showed up, Potter."


	8. A Way Back

Draco was a little taller than Harry remembered and a little thiner, but he still had the same white blonde silky hair, the same impressive Aristocratic chin and steel grey eyes that, at different times, might belong to your best friend at the pub or to the pissed-off ex-thug who was about to shove a power drill through your forehead.

Harry just looked at him as he approached and touched his forehead. Normally, he liked hearing Draco say "fuck" because he pronounced it "fack" when he was mad. On the other hand, of the top ten people he didn't expect to show up, Harry imagined he was the entire top five. He stayed put, not moving to the right or left, orienting his feet under himself so that, if he had to, he could make it out of the line of fire very quickly.

"Hi Draco."

"Potter. What are you doing here?" 

"That's how you greet a friend after all these years?" Harry asked, settling more comfortably into his crouch.

Draco raised a hand, putting it in front of himself like a shield. "When was the last time I saw you, Potter?"

"Ah, you don't think it's me, no? You think this is some trap. I might too, if I were you." Harry picked at the grass by his feet. 

"I saw you during the Battle. You were duelling running with a group of Death Eaters but you were Stunning anyone you could to get them out of the way. You broke off from them and kept running, Stunning anyone you could to knock them out. We ran past each other and you ran around a corner."

Draco nodded. He lowered his hand and came over, crushing Harry in a long hug.

"It's good to see you, my friend."

Harry hugged him back and smiled wryly. "I'm back to kill him, Draco. You know that."

"I figured. I knew that when you first asked me for this favour."

"Don't worry. I'm not going to ask for help this time."

"Don't be stupid. Of course I'll help you. I always look after my friends, even when they are ridiculously Gryffindor. Especially when those friend's lives are tied to my own."

Harry nodded and reached into his jumper. His hand closed around Draco's wand and he handed it over, grinning at the wide eyed look the other man gave the piece of wood.

"You still have it..."

Harry shrugged, pressing it into Draco's hand. "We swapped them during the spell. I used it as long as I could but now it's yours again. I imagine they didn't let you keep mine."

Draco blinked, took the wand and waved it hesitantly at himself. "Scorgify." Instantly, his skin, clothes and hair were scrubbed clean of blood and dirt.

Harry's chest constricted slightly as he watched his friend use his magic so easily. Draco cast a quick reparo on his ripped pants before looking up and grinning at Harry. The grin faded slightly as he caught sight of the expression on his friend's face.

"What?"

"It's nothing, just..." Harry shook his head. "You know where I was? You felt it?"

At Draco's nod, Harry sighed. "It took my magic, Draco. Nothing that pure and alive can exist down there."

Draco's eyes widened. "But...the spell..."

"Bonded our lives, our souls, not our magic. Mine died when the Killing Curse pulled me from my body." He shrugged. "I've gotten used to it. I'm fine." Harry closed the conversation firmly.

"So," Draco sat on the ground in front of him. "What was it like?"

"I figured out I didn't have magic down there. Even when I got stronger, I couldn't cast the simplest hex until I started learning Hellion magic."

"Is that how you got away?"

"No. I was...bought I guess, by one of Lucifer's generals who liked me. He told me he had the power and sway with Lucifer to protect you up here. He promised he would keep you from harm."

"And I was harmed."

"I felt your pain. Every cut they gave you, every curse they put you through." Harry looked up at Draco and grinned. "I decided enough was enough."

"How did you get out?"

"A key. A key to anywhere in the universe I want to go."

"Do you have it with you?"

"It's right here," Harry said, putting his hand on his chest like he was about to sing God Save the Queen. "Over my heart. I took his knife, cut myself open, and put the key inside. Now I can walk through shadows to the Room of Thirteen Doors. Go anywhere I want. Back Down. Maybe up to Heaven, too. I don't know. I haven't opened all thirteen doors.

"You put the key inside you? And it was made in the Underworld? It will poison you."

"Everything that happened to us for six years poisoned me. You think one little key is going to make a difference now?"

"This isn't good, Harry."

Harry waved that off, ignoring Draco's pursed lip glare. "I'm going to kill him. All of him."

"What you want may not be possible. He's disturbingly well connected these days from what I've gleaned, running everything from the shadows. He has everyone under his thumb. He's very well protected."

"I got in. And I've gotten through to plenty of well-protected Hellions as well. And I learned a few things along the way. Want to know what the first lesson way?"

Draco sighed. "Tell me, please."

Harry looked up at the night sky, watching the starlight. 

"Up here, Wizards worry about good and evil. Light magic versus dark."

"Everyone knows the differences."

"Not Downunder they don't. The dead understand something we don't. That there is no light magic. There is no dark magic. There is just magic. You can kill with a healing spell as easily as with a curse. If someone were bleeding to death, you could do a spell to slow their heart and keep it beating. You could regulate blood pressure, bring it up or down. But you can use those same spells on someone who isn't injured. You can turn down their blood pressure until they pass out. Slow and stop their heart. And they would be just as dead as if you had hexed them."

"This isn't the Underworld, Harry. People would know. There are rules up here."

"Not for me. I don't even know if they can track me anymore."

Draco raised an eyebrow and huffed. Loudly, he said, "Yet you have no magic to track."

"There are guns."

"Yes, you'll conquer the entire Dark Order with guns. More Muggle shite."

Harry shrugged and Draco looked at him, waiting until he met his gaze.

"You must let me help you," he said intently. "Let me help keep this plan of yours from going too far. I know that you've come back to Hell, this world of shite, but where else is there for you to go? For either of us? You must live here. You must have a name. You must be a person again."

What's that old Sunday school warning about how if you fight dragons too long, you become one? That had been spinning around in Harry's head for years, long enough that he knew he would rather be a dragon than a sheep in the slaughter. He'd rescued Draco because he owed him that, for all he felt him go through over the years, and because they were connected more potently than anyone could possibly realize. Harry looked into the steely grey eyes and let himself wonder for the first time in years whether there was a way back, back to himself, or some semblance of human that could exist in the world after the monster he had become was through with it. Maybe, just maybe, Draco could be his way back.


	9. The Key

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So sorry this has taken so long. I had major writer's block. The rest will be coming soon!

Harry sat on the edge of the cheap motel room bed listening to Draco breathe and wanting a cigarette. He didn't smoke much but he had picked up the habit from Azazel and liked to indulge every so often when shit was really hitting the fan Down Under. The bullets in his chest ached, almost like someone shot them in there. He thought vaguely that one of the slugs was scraping against a rib and made a mental note to get Draco to deal with the issue in the morning. He glanced over at the man in question. He had Apparated the two of them back into London and had passed out almost almost immediately after showering, not even bothering to remove the damp towel from around his waist or climb under the covers. 

Harry got up and pulled the bottle of vodka whose purchase had earned him a raised eyebrow from Draco, out of the brown bag by the door. He unscrewed the top and took a drink. The vodka burnt his throat, and tasted like Windex and battery acid, but it was the most effective thing he could think of that might help clean out his various internal and external wounds. The fact that it tasted vaguely like the Aqua Regia he got Downunder was just a plus.

Between the bullets still lodged in his chest and his talk with Draco, Harry knew sleeping wasn't going to be easy. He stripped off his shirts before tossing back one more long swig of vodka and gritted his teeth before pouring a healthy amount over the partially healed lacerations on his chest. The cuts were long and deep, slicing across the length of each of his ribs where the bones had tried to force their way out of his body. Silently cursing himself for letting that Death Eater get the drop on him, Harry took another drink before screwing the top back onto the bottle and falling onto the bed.

When he finally drifted off, Harry was back in the Underworld, lying in the dirt on the floor of the arena. His belly was slashed open and he was holding his innards in with his hands. The beast he had been fighting, a silver bull-like thing with a dozen razor-sharp horns, was lying dead a few yards away. They always had him fight weird animals. He didn't know for a long time that it was another Underworld insult. They made him a bestiari. It was a Roman thing - a fun way to use their dumbest, gimpiest, most cross-eyed fighters. Bestiari weren't good enough to fight people, so they fought animals. Why waste a human gladiator on someone who had just as good a chance of cutting off his own leg as stabbing his opponent? Plus, it was fun watching bears eat retards. Still was, really.

A couple of arena slaves rolled Harry onto a stretcher and took him backstage. In the fighters' quarters, a wizened old gladiator trainer shuffled over and handed him a bottle of Aqua Regia. That was medical care in the Underworld. A hospital in a bottle. Later, the same old trainer came by with a needle and werewolf-hair thread and sewed him up. 

Later that night, Azazel, Harry's slave master, sent for him. Fresh wounds or not, when he called, Harry went. At least he was reasonable enough to send a couple of burly guards to carry him to his palace on a litter. 

None of the palaces in the Underworld came close to Lucifer's in size or beauty. He lived at the top of a literal ivory tower, miles high. You couldn't even see the top from the ground. The joke was that he built it so high so he could lean out the window and pound on Earth's floor with a broom handle when he wanted them to turn the noise down. 

Lucifer's four favourite generals had their own palaces.

Azazel was Lucifer's second favourite general, so his palace was second only to Beelzebub's in size and beauty. Beelzebub was Lucifer's favourite general. While Azazel's palace was made entirely of flowing water, Beelzebub's was mud-and-dung bricks covered in human bones. Not what you would call pretty, but it made a statement.

Inside Azazel's palace it was all Gothic arches and stained glass, laid out in classic cathedral style. A carpeted nave led to an altar at the far end where a mammoth clockwork Christ buggered the Virgin Mary every hour on the hour. 

"You're going to use those arena skills of yours to kill Beelzebub for me," said Azazel. 

Harry rolled his eyes. "Don't I rate a night off? I'm held together with Silly String and good wishes."

Azazel smiled, showing his hundreds of pointed teeth. "Perfect. Then no one will suspect you. More importantly, they won't suspect me." He handed Harry something, a sharpened piece of spiral-cut metal, like a long ice pick. Harry had seen it before. It was General Belial's favourite weapon. "Leave that behind, but be sure to dip it into Beelzebub's blood first." He paused. "And wear gloves. I don't want your human taint all over it. They have to think that Belial did it."

Harry saw more than a few problems with this plan. "Beelzebub's palace is a fucking fortress with about ten time more troops and guard animals than you have. And he knows I work for you. His guards will never let me get near him."

Azazel showed his teeth again. He liked doing that. It used to make Harry want to pee his pants. Now it was jut a ritual, like a dog biting another dog's throat to remind it who was the alpha.

Azazel reached into his robes made of shimmering golden water and pulled out a heavy brass key. "Have you ever head of the Room of Thirteen Doors?" he asked. "This key will take you there. The room leads to anywhere and everywhere in the universe simultaneously. Including Beelzebub's bedroom."

He handed Harry the key. It was heavier than it looked and weirdly soft. He realized that it was not made of brass at all. It was living skin over bones. 

"In one hour, you'll enter the Room of Thirteen Doors through a shadow behind this altar. From the room, you'll go out through the Door of Fire. That's a killing portal. It will take you right to your prey. Once you've killed Beelzebub, leave Belial's weapon and return here."

Harry turned over the key in his hands. He should be horrified by it, but he wasn't. There was something animal-like about the key, like it was a pet that wanted to please it's master.

"You're thinking that I've given you a means to escape, aren't you?" Azazel asked.

Harry looked up and batted his eyes innocently at his master. "Me? I love it here, boss. Why would I ever want to escape?"

Azazel touched the edge of the key with a fingertip.

"Lucifer can leave the Underworld and travel easily through the cosmos, while the rest of us are bound here, cursed by the living world. I've found a way out. Not for me, but for someone like you. However, you should remember not to go too far. Though I can't leave the Underworld, I have some influence in your world, among those humans dedicated to this realm. Cross me, try to escape from me, and something awful will happen to the one you love. That blonde boy you left behind. Do you understand me?"

"I understand."

"You're not leaving here. Someday maybe, but not right now and not for a good long time." Azazel turned and started away. "Keep the key next to your body. That way, it will know to open the room for you. Wait an hour before you go. I need to be somewhere public when it happens."

An obedient little slave, Harry did as his master told him. 

He waited an hour and slipped into a shadow behind the altar. Passing into that utter blackness felt like falling through cool air.

He found himself in a semicircular room that, surprise, contained thirteen doors. Each door seemed to be made of a different material. Wood, water, air, stone, metal. More abstract things, too. The Door of Dreams moved and writhed, reshaping itself from second to second. There was a sound from the far side of the room. Harry went to the only unmarked door and listened. There was something moving behind the door and it knew he was there. Something growled and scratched to get at him. Then, there was a shriek, a long, keening, furious animal sound that hit him like a knife dragged through his skull. Right then and there, Harry knew he was going to do whatever Azazel wanted and kill any soul he told him to. He would be his servant as long as he left Draco alone and never, ever asked him to go through the unmarked door.


	10. A Plan

Harry woke with a start, the taste of the Underworld in the back of his throat. He knew it was just the bad vodka, but that didn't help. He gripped the sheets so tightly he felt his fingernails rip through the cheap cloth. His head was full of monsters and he was one of them. He sat up smelling sulfur and wanting to kill something. He wanted a monster to burst through the window so he could take the bone knife and cut its black heart out. It felt good to destroy. It felt good to cut and tear and rend. Harry's thoughts spun deeper and darker as he slid back, the remnants of his dream pulling him into the untouchable place he tried not to let himself go. That place was awful but...the person Harry was when he lost himself there got things done. There was so much to do, so many questions to have answered and that Harry would succeed. That Harry needed to hurt something. Not for defence or even for orders. That Harry wanted to kill. 

Suddenly, a calming presence swept through his whirling mind, cooling and settling Harry's turbulent thoughts. Draco stretched his long, pale arms above his head and yawned widely, blinking sleep from his eyes. His stilled and his brow creased before he looked over to see Harry watching him. 

"Take a photo, Potter, it'll last longer." Draco smirked, sitting up and Harry let out a breathe he hadn't realized he'd been holding. He knew Draco had felt what was going on in Harry's head but he was immensely grateful that the blonde didn't mention it.

He said nothing but watched as Draco grabbed his wand, gracefully flicking it at his towel to transfigure it into a pair of form fitting slacks. He then waved it precisely over his pillowcase to create a button down shirt for himself. Satisfied, he glanced at Harry, sitting stock still on his bed and frowned, clearly worried but unwilling to try to open that particular can of worms at the moment. Instead, he opted for an easier topic. "Breakfast?"

Thirty minutes later, having fought through the latest December blizzard, Draco and Harry were sitting in a doughnut shop on Hackney drinking coffee and eating a scant breakfast. 

Donut Universe was a twenty-four-hour place with an outer space theme. There was a big plastic UFO suspended from the ceiling over the display case. The girl working the counter was a green-haired pixie who looked somewhere between twelve and thirty-five. She was wearing sequinned antennae that bobbed up and down when she talked. The grown-up part of Harry's brain imagined that she tore the stupid things off and tossed them into the backseat of her car the moment she finished her shift. The seventeen-year-old in him wondered if she sometimes wore the antennae when she screwed her boyfriend, and what it would be like to look up and see her and those sequinned balls bobbing up and down over him. 

Harry snorted at the image, causing Draco to glance up from the paper with an eyebrow raised in question. When Harry waved it off, he sipped his coffee and made a face. "The shit that passes for coffee these days." He took another sip anyway and regarded Harry over the rim of the cup for a moment. "We need a plan." He flipped over his paper menu and selected a green crayon from the grimy cup full of broken drawing implements. He wrote out 'KV' on the right side and circled it before pushing the paper toward Harry.

"Here is the end result - we want to Kill Voldemort - but it's impossible. My mother always said that when confronted with a seemingly impossible task, the first thing you have to do is look at it backwards." He wrote the numbers one to four on the paper and added lines jutting out from them, making each look like a demented spider. He then added arrows connecting each of the numbers leading to the circled 'KV'. As he worked, Harry stared at his companion, attempting to pay attention. There was something completely insane about watching Draco Malfoy, the once unchallenged Prince of Slytherin, draw on a menu with a Muggle crayon. It seemed to Harry a perfect example of just how surreal his life had become. He was unused to making plans and following carefully laid out steps. Even before he had been Downunder, he had adopted a more reactionary, act first, think later type approach to situations. He had assumed this would be no different. He had not counted on Draco's continued participation in his little escapade.

Unaware of Harry's drifting thoughts, Draco tapped the 'KV'. "How do we do this?"

"We find him."

"And to find him? It is almost guaranteed that he has moved from the Manor.”

"Ask someone?"

Draco nodded, ignoring Harry's sarcasm and adding more notes to the web. "So we need to figure out who would be most likely to have information about his whereabouts. Then we have to figure out a way to detain that person long enough to extract said information. Say we get it, then we have to get in and get close enough to him without being captured." He stared into middle space and drummed his fingers on the table. He spoke as if he had forgotten Harry was there. "You don't have magic, so we need something capable of protecting Muggles from magical attacks. We also need disguises, Polyjuice or an incredibly powerful Glamour of some sort. I wonder..."

His grey eyes, which had glazed over in thought, cleared as he focused on Harry once again. "I know where to go."

Harry nodded and shifted in his seat but as he tensed his muscles to stand, the ever-present slugs nestled in his abdomen made themselves known. Draco caught his wince and his gaze sharpened.

"That's the second thing we are going to do. The first is we are going to see a friend about those bullets."

Harry opened his mouth to protest but shut it again at the look Draco gave him. With that, Harry paid, courtesy of his favourite crackhead, and the two turned up their collars against the biting winter wind.


	11. The Good Doctor

The place Draco took Harry was in a strip mall in one of the seedier sections of the city. The office they headed toward was tucked between a fried-chicken franchise and a nail salon with signs in Vietnamese and dyslexic English. 

The office was a blank storefront with blinds covering all the windows and the words EXISTENTIAL HEALING on the door in gold peel-and-stick letters. Harry reached for the door but Draco caught his arm and knocking smartly. The door swung open almost immediately. A tiny shaggy-haired brunette in tattered black jeans and Chuck Taylors stood there. 

"Tom!?" The girl screeched and beckoned them in.

Harry opened his mouth to comment on that but a glare from the blonde had him shrugging and following behind him into the office. 

The inside of the clinic was as bare as the outside. A couple of junkyard desks, with a not very new-looking laptop on top of one. A file cabinet covered in real estate stickers, half a dozen metal folding chairs and a pile of Sports Illustrated and Cosmopolitans probably pulled from the dumpster behind the nail salon completed the office decor.

Harry was seriously considering turning around and leaving, with or without Draco. Then the man Harry assumed must be the doctor walked out of his exam room.

"What are you waiting for? Get in here," he snapped at Harry. With a shove from Draco, he went.

Doctor Kinski, Harry learned via the Scientia, was as impressive as his office wasn't. He was tall. A little taller than Draco. Like Harry, he'd clearly been a lanky boy, but the years had added a few pounds to his middle and etched lines like a desert riverbed around his eyes. But he was still handsome. Harry could tell that when he was young he'd been the kind of good-looking that made girls forget about their boyfriends for the night and made guys want to punch him in the face on principle.

Kinski touched Harry's head and cheeks. Took his pulse at his wrist and neck and moved each lid back and forth for a look at his eyes. Harry flinched away from the touches but found the doctor was so quick it was over before he could react.

"Hurting?" He asked.

"Yeah. My ribs."

"Anywhere else?"

Harry just raised an eyebrow, glancing to Draco and letting his frustration melt down the bond. Draco determinedly avoided his gaze, settling himself in a waiting chair by the door.

"Okay. I want you to try to relax. Just breathe in and out real deeply. Can you do that?"

Harry blinked slowly, never breaking eye contact with the doctor as he took in exaggerated long breaths before letting them out ludicrously slowly. 

"Can you fix him?" Draco spoke for the first time.

"I've fixed worse." He looked over to the girl. "You want to get me the things, Candy?"

"How many do you want?"

"I think six should do it. Remove your shirt and jacket and lie on the table." The last was directed to Harry, who shot one last pleading look at Draco. The grey eyes were fixed on an old eye-sight poster but Harry could see a tiny smirk playing at the corners of his lips. He sighed but obliged, pulling off his t-shirt, jumper and jacket and laying down on the padded surface of the exam table.

Candy got six fist-sized objects from an old medical cabinet. Each of the objects was wrapped in dark purple silk. She set them on the exam table and unwrapped them. They were six shiny pieces of some milky-white stone.

Kinski took two of the stones and placed them on each side of his head. Candy placed others over his heart and in his hands. Kinski tapped Harry's jaw and put the last piece, the smallest which was nearly flat, between his teeth, removing his fingers just in time to avoid a bite from the brunette.

He got old, unglazed clay jars from under the table, poured several oils onto his hands, rubbed them together, then smeared the dark potion on Harry's abdomen. The oils smelled like jasmine and wet pavement after a rain.

Candy gave Kinski a carved wooden stylus and drew symbols, strange letters, and runes into the oil. Harry lifted his head to get a better look at the markings. He was drawing a spell on him, but he didn't know what kind. He had never seen one like it before. He recognized the characters surrounding the central circle and seven-pointed star, however. The symbols were in an old script, Enochian. Centuries old or more. Azazel had taught Harry some spells from ancient books written in that script. Kinski couldn't be a demon because only Lucifer could walk out of the Underworld. But demons had plenty of human lapdogs. Lurker groupies and satanic assholes. Kinski couldn't be one, though. Draco would know and he would never have brought him to the guy. Still, Harry was comforted by the familiar weight of Azazel's knife.

Kinski set down the stylus. He finished the spell and the stones around Harry began to glow. They shined right through him. He could see the outline of his own veins and arteries, muscles and bones, and his beating heart. He could also see the Key. Kinski was chanting quietly. Harry tried to listen to the words, but all he wanted to do was close his eyes. He squeezed them shut and grit his teeth hard around the stone in his mouth.

Harry could feel someone pressing close to his shoulder near his head. It was Draco. He leaned his head against Harry's temple and lightly touched his upper arm. His touch melted through Harry's entire being, wrapping him in a shroud of comfort and safety.

It's okay. His voice came to Harry through the light. Relax. Everything's going to be alright.

His voice was like honey and heroin. Sweet and sleepy. Harry's shoulders unknotted. His legs flopped to the sides. His whole body relaxed. He felt safe, warm and...happy. He barely recognized the emotion but there it was. Draco's close presence, his being closer than anything Harry had felt previously from the bond, made him feel human.

The stones' light faded suddenly and Harry felt the delicious experience fade with it. The room was back to normal and so was he, or what he knew as normal. Harry opened his eyes, expecting to see Draco standing over him, but the blonde hadn't moved from his chair by the door. He no longer looked relaxed. His fingers were clutching the arms of the chair and his grey eyes were huge and fixed on Harry.

Candy was helping Kinski wrap the stones back up in the silk and put them back in the cabinet. The doctor took Harry's pulse and nodded.

"Want to keep them?"

Harry frowned, ripping his gaze away from Draco and frowning at the doctor until he saw what Kinski was holding. A small stone dish with the five bullets laying innocently within. He blinked.

"No."

The man shrugged, turned and left the room, followed closely by Candy. Harry sat up slowly, feeling strangely heavy and tingly all over. He stood carefully and nodded his thanks to Draco who handed him a scrap of cloth from the counter. He cleaned the oils from his skin before pulling his shirts and jacket back on. 

Harry looked over to the blonde, who was watching him carefully, a calculating look in his eye. Draco took a breathe as if to say something but seemed to change his mind. He sighed and shook his head once. Harry pursed his lips but followed as the other led the way out of the now deserted office.

His silence lasted fourteen blocks.

"Are we going to talk about what happened back there?" Harry was struggling to keep up with the fast pace set by his companion.

Draco refused to look at Harry as they walked. "No."

"You know as well as I do that the bond doesn't work like that! That was something else. That was magic I've never even heard of before." Harry was excited, he had felt alive, connected and content for the first time in years. He had felt like his old self. He needed it back and he needed to make sure he could hold onto it this time.

Draco whirled around and Harry tensed, instantly ready to fight. But the man simply stared at him for a long moment. When he spoke his voice was quiet and pained. "Stop. Please." He ran a hand through his white blonde hair. "I know. Alright. I know. But we can't deal with yet another ridiculous and impossible problem right now. Can we please just focus on the task at hand and handle that when and if we manage to make it out of this alive?"

Harry blinked at the taller man. Every instinct was screaming to get the answers now as the memory of his old self trickled further and further away. But the look on Draco's face gave him pause. His friend wasn't ready to go there. Not yet. And he was right, Harry couldn't afford to be his old self until the work was done. They both needed him to be the thing he had become if either of them had a hope of surviving.

Harry swallowed his protests, took a deep breathe and released the tight grip he had on the remnants of himself. His muscles loosened as he let the Underworld take him over yet again. Draco visibly relaxed as he recognized the dark glint in Harry's eye for what it was. The brunette grinned. "Right. So where are we going?"


	12. Spinner's End

After a quick stop at what Harry assumed had been Draco's hideout to retrieve a long thick coat with numerous pockets, Draco Apparated them outside the city. Once the nausea had passed and Harry was able to stand upright again, he looked up to see an empty lot of scorched earth. 

"Spinner's End," Draco informed him unhelpfully as the coin had just told him the same. "Snape's old home. It was destroyed a little while after the Battle of Hogwarts." 

Draco explained that before he died, Snape used to store special products in his basement, spells and potions he had been working on in secret. It might be useful.

Harry led Draco to the edge of the vacant lot, near a street-light where the shadows were deep and wide enough for two. He had explained the general concept of the Room to the man but they hadn't been back in since the rescue. "I've only done this the once with another human. It might be a little weird. It'll feel like you're falling, but you're not. If this works, just step into the room like normal."

"What will happen if it does not work?"

"I have no idea."

Draco took out a flask from one of his numerous pockets and took a big drink. When he'd put the flask away, Harry took his arm and pulled him into the biggest, darkest shadow he could find. 

There was a moment of coolness in the transition, and then they were inside the room. Easy as a broken leg and they were both still in one piece.

Draco looked at Harry, his eyes darting around the room. "It worked then?"

"Two arms, two legs. It worked."

Draco let out a breath and looked around, a little awe-struck. "We're at the centre of the universe. The cross-roads of creation."

"I suppose. I never thought about it that way. For me, it was just the emergency exit out the back of a burning building."

Draco turned in a slow circle. "Merlin. It really is a room full of doors."

"Thirteen. What did you expect?"

"I assumed the doors were a metaphor. Each door would be a way to describe a different state of being."

"No. It's just a lot of doors."

"Clearly. Where does this one lead?"

"They change, depending on where I want to go. It's all about associations. The Door of Fire leads to chaotic places, usually dangerous. Wind is mostly calm, but changeable. Dreams leads to, well, dreams."

He pointed to the thirteenth door. "Where does that one go?"

"I never opened it."

"Why not?"

"Because it scares me shitless, and, anyway, that's not how we're going. We're going through here."

"What is this?"

"The Door of the Dead."

Snape's basement smelt like a straw doormat that had been left out in the rain too long. It was also pitch-black.

Draco took a glass vial from his pocket and blew on it. The room filled with light. Harry raised his eyes in surprise and Draco shrugged. "Spells can be tracked." Who needed a flashlight when you had your own personal potion master?

Paint was peeling off the basement walls and ceiling in jagged sheets. Thick roots grew down from the lot above and crept across the ceiling and walls, like black and brittle arteries. A knot of roots had rotted away the plaster from one wall, leaving exposed lath. The furniture sat obviously where they had been years earlier - tables, chairs, and a sofa wooly with mold.

"What are we looking for?" Harry asked.

Draco shrugged. 

"Anything that seems useful."

He moved around the room but Harry leaned against a mildewed wall. His head was suddenly spinning. Voices and faces shot through him, like streaks of lightning. He could feel his younger self, trapped in the memory of the last moment he spent with Snape. The inside of his head was all fear and hunger and knives, crawling like insects. Suddenly, he did not want to be there anymore.

"Ha!"

Draco was in the corner of the room with one hand pressed up against the ceiling and the other pressed into a small divot in the wall. The opposite corner of the room scraped open, dragging on the junk that had accumulated in the door mechanism over the years. With his bottled light, Draco led the way into the hidden room.

The hidden area was in a lot better shape that the other. There was a lot of power in the room. It was protected by much more powerful spells than the rest of the house had been. Every inch of the walls, floors, and ceiling were covered with multicoloured runes, sigils, and angular angelic scripts.

Draco was studying the place with grim intensity. He ran his fingers over the wall and they came away black. He nodded, satisfied with something.

"Bring the light over here, will you?"

Draco carried the light to where Harry was standing. There was a strange writing on the wall, but it wasn't of Earth. It was something he had seen before, like cuneiform that had been gashed into the wall with a meat cleaver. A symbol painted in bloody iron oxide covered the rest of the wall. It was a circle that wrapped around and around its own interior, folding in on itself. It was a labyrinth, an ancient symbol of the deepest, darkest secrets and a Final Jeopardy - hard knowledge. Something shimmered at the corner of the labyrinth. Harry dug his fingernails into the soft plaster and pried out the treasure.

It was a Zippo lighter. On the front was a kind of cigar-chomping hot-rod devil's head done by an artist who signed his name "Coop." Harry turned the lighter over and clicked open the top, looking for a message, an inscription, or anything that might point them to something useful. There was nothing. He flicked the Zippo closed. It was just a lighter.

Draco took it from him and examined it closely under the light. In a minute, he shook his head and handed it back.

"We're missing something."

Harry tossed the Zippo up and down in his hand a few times, enjoying the weight of it. "What's a lighter for?"

Draco scraped his feet on the dusty floor. "To give Muggles fire."

Harry held the lighter up, clicked the top open, and struck the flint once. The room filled with light. Way too much light. It leaked from the walls and the floor. They had to wrap their arms over their eyes to keep from going blind.

Something brushed Harry's arm. Dirt swirled from the floor as wind exploded around them, getting stronger by the second. For a minute, Harry wondered if he was hallucinating, feeling some strange memory through the coin. Then Draco stumbled into him, blown over by a sudden gust, and he knew it was all real. 

He moved his arm down as his eyes adjusted to the light. It was pure white and kept moving, like ripples on the bottom of a swimming pool. The walls looked like stretched skin and something was trying to come through them. They both could see the silhouettes of faces and arms as they reached for them, straining at the thin wall flesh. The bodies writhed and twisted, unable to hold a shape very long as they pressed in on them. Arms like roiling packs of snakes. Bodies like the skeletons of fish and birds. Faces that seemed to be all teeth, all nails, or screaming from the ends of arms, where the creatures' hands should have been.

Draco shouted, "Can't you take us out of here?"

"We need a shadow, but the light's everywhere."

Draco flung open his coat. Vials containing his potions, rows and rows of them, were sewn into the lining. He pulled out one after the other and hurled them at the grasping hands. They didn't seem to notice.

Harry grabbed Draco's sleeve and pulled him toward the door. He kept throwing his vials. Every now and then, an arm or a monstrous face contorted in pain from the feeble attack, but the wall goblins came back roaring at them a second later.

At the door, Draco shoved Harry away. "Let me go!" he shouted, and tore his arm free. He was back inside the possessed room, with the walls just inches away from him. He reached into the very bottom of his coat lining and pulled out a bottle the size of a brandy flask. Screaming, "Tas de merde!" He smashed the bottle on the writhing mass of arms and fangs and threw himself back into the room with Harry, knocking them both to the filthy floor. 

The secret room was on fire, but the creatures in the walls were still trying to get at them, only they seemed to be trapped behind an invisible barrier. Unfortunately, the fire was not. 

The rotten wood in their room ignited the moment the flames got near it. In a few seconds, the place was blazing like Nero's Roman holiday. The good news was that a burning room created a lot of excellent shadows. Harry grabbed Draco and dragged him down into a deep slash of darkness at the edge of the flames. They emerged, stumbling into the Room of Thirteen Doors, eyes tearing, lungs burning with smoke. Harry didn't stop moving, but guided Draco through the Door of Memory and out onto the cool and silent street beyond. They turned around and watched Snape's vacant lot crack open and flames shoot two stories into the air. By the time Draco had spun on the spot and Apparated them away, the whole lot had collapsed in on itself, shaking the street like an earthquake and blasting a fat orange fireball into the night sky. 

Draco brought them to a unlit parking lot behind an out-of-business movie multiplex between Harlow Boulevard and Sansbra Avenue. Both men were still rasping. Harry knew it was the smoke in his lungs, but it felt like he had been holding his breath since he got out of the ground. He can already hear the scream of fire trucks echoing off the buildings all the way across town. 

"Sounds like a lot of them."

Draco snorted. "They always look after those who can pay. It's the same in all cities in all time, all over the world."

"What was in the last bottle you threw back there?"

"Spiritus Dei oil. A venerable old catholicon, and poisonous to almost anything that walks the earth. Very hard to find. That was my last bottle."

"Sorry, man."

"Don't worry. Worth it."

He grinned and reached into his coat, producing several handfuls of vials.

"Found Snape's secret stash right before you set off the trap. Everything we need."

Harry grinned, clapping the man on the shoulder. He took the Zippo out of his pocket. "What am I going to do with this thing?"

"Keep it. My exceptional knowledge of magic and the transmutation of elements tells me that it is not an ordinary lighter."

Harry snorted. "It's a stupid vessel for such a powerful talisman."

"Perhaps it will have use."

"So you think he knows I'm back?"

"You just blew up the old home of one of his top lieutenants. Plus, you took me from his quarters right in front of him. He might suspect something."

Harry grinned. He flipped open the top of the lighter and struck it once. Draco jerked away, banging his shoulder against the wall they stood behind. The little flame flickered, but nothing else happened. Harry wanted a cigarette, but his throat and lungs felt like hot gravel. He closed the lighter and put it back in his pocket.


	13. Abomination

The grilled fish tacos at No Mames weren't half bad. The place was minimal inside. A few folding tables and cheap white plastic lawn chairs. It was a pleasantly anonymous atmosphere. Harry and Draco sat and ate a cheap lunch in silence, both lost in thought.

When Draco excused himself to go to the restroom, Harry took the opportunity to duck outside for a smoke. He bummed a fag off a heavy black guy who was wearing too much eyeliner and not enough shirt. He leaned against the wall and considered the traffic speeding along the busy road. Draco was looking pretty beat. He had Apparated the two of them across London a number of times today and Harry could feel his exhaustion.

He scanned the traffic for a cab. Draco would pitch a fit but it would get them back in one piece. A black top showed up a minute later and Harry waved. It cut across two lanes, aimed right for him. When it was one lane away and about to turn into the curb, three black SUVs came blasting around it from behind and cut it off. The middle one pulled up in front of Harry and a tall man in a dark blue suit stepped out. He wore a matching blue tie that was wrapped around his neck like a scarf. His white shirt was untucked and at least six cuff links could be seen poking through the button holes. It was like someone who understood Muggle fashion had laid it all out but failed to give any form of instruction. The man flashed a badge.

"Excuse me, sir," he said in a West London drawl. "I'm Auror Larson Wellesley. There's a matter that we need to speak with you about."

Harry sighed. He should have known something was up when he saw three vans rolling down the street together. Was there any other time so many expensive vehicles could be seen in one place? It was always a royal motorcade or a bust.

He stepped back and reached for his knife. The van doors swung open wide. It was bright out and all Harry could see inside were silhouettes. There were at least six of them and he could see that every one of them had a gun pointed at him. He was not exactly in the right shape to get shot fifty times. He brought his hand forward and held it up. Nothing palmed there. Everybody stayed cool.

Wellesley took his arm and led him to the middle van. Just before he stepped inside, he slapped cuffs on Harry's wrists in one smooth motion, like maybe he had done it before. He pushed Harry inside and joined him in the rear seat, keeping himself between the door and his captive. All three vans shot straight down the road, turning once, before continuing on. Harry just managed to prevent himself from looking back at the diner to try to catch a glimpse of Draco. Hopefully the other man had seen the commotion and gotten himself away.

"Is this about those library fines? I swear I meant to pay them, but I was ten at the time and had a lousy credit rating." The Aurors in the front, dressed much like their colleague, ignored him. Wellesley checked his watch and looked out the window. Harry pulled on the cuffs. There was barely any give. He might be able to break them and get them off, but not without shattering bones and peeling most of the skin off his hands. "Nice ride, by the way. Very low key. Don't remember you lot rolling in anything quite like this."

Wellesley didn't look at him, "Magic is traceable. Muggle means can't be tracked. Very important these days."

Harry perked up. The ridiculous clothes had been his first clue but if these blokes weren't even using magic, then they almost certainly weren't affiliated with Voldemort.

"You just hijacked me off the street. Tell me why I shouldn't be killing you right now?"

Wellesley finally turned and looked at Harry, giving him his best squint, trying to drill a hole in his head with his eyes.

"Because if I shoot you, you're not going to hop up and decapitate me. Just because we aren't with Him doesn't mean we don't have friends. For example, the guns my men and I are carrying were designed by a coalition of Aurors and Muggle engineers. What I'm saying is that if you sneeze or blink or do anything even slightly annoying, I'll burn you down with the same holy fire that the Archangel Michael used to blast Lucifer's ass out of Heaven and into the Abyss."

"I heard the Ministry was dead. Aurors gone. Who do you people work for?"

"We work for the only hope we have left."

The Veritas buzzed contentedly against Harry's chest. He was telling the truth. Or he thought that he was.

"So, how was your day?"

Wellesley shook his head and checked his watch again. He was not as cool as he looked at first. Something was worrying him and it was not Harry.

"I've read your file. I know all about you. You haven't exactly been inconspicuous since you got back."

"You guys have been watching me?"

"From the moment you walked out of the cemetery. At first, we thought you were an Inferi, and we were about to send out waste disposal. But when you mugged that crackhead and didn't eat him, we decided just to keep an eye on you. We only lost you twice, but you seem to make a splash every time you come in to the city so we had no trouble picking the trail back up."

Harry snorted. Wellesley kept talking. "Anyway, with all your fun and games, my superior asked me to bring you in for a talk."

"Seems like my lucky day." The cuffs held his wrists together, which made his arms rest on his still sore chest. Harry shifted around in his seat, trying to find a more comfortable position. He glanced out the window and saw that they were crossing the bridge. "You putting me on trial?"

That made him chuckle. "Even if we were still able to do that, what makes you think you deserve a trial?"

"Isn't there something in the law about everyone getting a fair trial?"

"That only applies to the living, son."

"I'm sitting right here."

"Technically, no. Not in any legal sense. Legally, you're a nonperson. You've been a long-gone daddy out of this realm of existence for six years and change. A missing person can be declared dead after five, which means that you've been legally dead for over a year."

"So, you know who I am and where I've been."

"I know everything."

"If you know where I've been, then you know why I'm back. Let me go and let me do what I came here for. I'll get rid of some very bad people for you."

"How? By blowing up Spinner's End?"

"That was a mistake."

"Was it? Thanks for clearing that up. The truth is, I don't give a damn about that. What I care about is you. What you represent and the kind of trouble you bring with you. You've already drawn Muggle attention and we can't have that. You're a walking calamity."

"You're worried about Muggle attention. Hate to break it to you, but the Muggles have already noticed what's going on. You think you fucks have been doing a good enough job without me here? Bloody tops, mate." He rolled his eyes."Listen, I'm tired of this. Tell me where we're going or I'm getting out."

Wellesley and the Auror in the front laughed. "I wouldn't try. I'm dead serious when I tell you I could put a bullet in your head right now and go have a sandwich."

"What kind?"

"What kind of what?"

"What kind of sandwich? What's a murder sandwich taste like? Does it come with extra cheese or chilli fries? What tastes better after murder, Coke or Pepsi?"

"You are working on my very last nerve, you wanker."

"I'm going home." Harry reached across Wellesley for the door, shoving him back into the seat with his shoulder. The Auror went for his gun.

Harry learned early on that when facing down multiple attackers, it was always best to make the first move. It let them know that you were ready to fight and that you were crazy enough to get the party started. One rule of thumb in fighting was that crazy can often overcome skill and numbers, because, while a trained fighter might actually enjoy going up against another trained fighter, no one really wanted to wrestle with crazy. Crazy didn't know when it was winning. And crazy didn't know when to stop. If you couldn't pull off crazy, if, for instance, you were handcuffed in a small van with six armed assailants, stupid was a decent substitute for crazy.

Wellesley still had his hand inside his jacket when Harry slammed his elbow into his throat. He froze, trying to remember how to breathe. Before the boys in the front of the van got any ideas, Harry swung an elbow up over Wellesley's head and brought the arm down on the other side, getting the cuffs around his throat. Then he fell back across the seat, pulling the man on top of him. The men in the front of the van had all drawn their guns, but Harry wasn't sweating. If they wanted to shoot him, they were going to have to blow a lot of holes in the big man first.

"Stand down," shouted Wellesley. Then, quieter, to Harry, "That got you far, didn't it, shithead?"

"It got me your neck. That's a start." Harry tightened the cuffs across his throat. Just enough so that he could feel it, but not enough to make him pass out. "You're not the first bunch that ever kidnapped me, but you're definitely the least fun."

Wellesley went for his gun again. Harry sprang forward and slammed his head into the door frame, spinning him at the same time so that his body stayed between his boys and him. He had four guns on him and one guy was still driving.

They were somewhere south of the city. The van turned into the parking lot of what looked like an aircraft assembly plant that hadn't seen action in twenty years. There were diamond-shaped hazardous materials warnings and rusted Do Not Enter signs on all of the fences and buildings.

The van slammed to a stop and the side door opened. Harry tightened the cuffs on Wellesley's neck and pulled him back to use as a shield against whatever was coming into the van.

A woman in a crisply tailored power suit leaned her head inside. She was dressed impeccably, unlike her underlings.

"I can come back later if you two gentlemen need a moment alone," she said.

Harry let up on Wellesley's neck, but still kept hold of him.

"He's the one getting grabby," said Wellesley.

The woman nodded. "That's what he does. All those years in the Abyss have left him with some impulse control issues. It's all in his file." She looked at Harry. "Let Auror Wellesley up right now. No one is going to shoot you. And, Larson, uncuff this man. You look like a couple of first formers."

"Sorry. Who are you again?" Harry asked.

The woman shook her head, and then walked away. The Aurors had holstered their special guns. Harry lifted his arms so that Wellesley could wiggle out from under the cuffs. He got out of the van without looking back and started adjusting his suit and tie. Harry followed him outside and held up the cuffs. He took his time, playing with his jacket and tie like a bad Vegas lounge comedian. Finally, he dug a key out of his pocket and unlocked him. There were red marks on Harry's wrists, but there were corresponding marks on Wellesley's thrust, so he guessed they were even.

Harry turned to the Aurors. "Anybody got a fag?"

"You can't smoke here," said Wellesley.

"We're out in the open in the middle of nowhere. Why not?"

"Are you stupid?" asked Wellesley. "That's Anael. She's an angel. They're very sensitive to things like cigarette smoke."

"Cool. I've never seen an angel in disguise before." Harry followed her to the old assembly plant.

Anael wasn't what Harry imagined an angel would look like. She was about as ethereal as a zip gun. She walked like she was about to call in an air strike or buy Europe. Donald Trump in drag with her enemies' balls in a candy dish on her desk, right next to the stapler.

The complex's main building was huge. Probably a WWII-era industrial assembly line. Anael opened a side door and Harry could see inside. Absolutely nothing. Concrete floor and metal walls. Shadows of smashed and abandoned machinery. Not even lights.

A few steps into the building, Harry hit a kind of barrier. It was like walking through warm Jello. Then he was suddenly in Times Square on New Year's. People in robes and suits were bustling all over the place. Some were moving huge engine looking objects on automated chain lifters. Others were driving forklifts with pallets loaded with wood of different types. Silver ingots and iron bars. Industrial drums of what looked like potion ingredients. They were assembling armoured vehicles and what looked like the weapons the Aurors walking with Harry had.

Harry looked back at the entrance. There were angelic runes chiseled into the concrete floor. Overhead some kind of massive machine hung bolted to the ceiling. It hummed like a beehive and gave off a shimmering fluorescent-green light.

"It's called a Phylactery Accelerator," said Anael. "The holy relics and sigils in the floor form a protective talisman."

"But not one powerful enough to hide all of whatever the hell this is."

"Please don't use profanity in here. The Accelerator captures the magic released whenever we absolutely must use it, and uses that energy to amplify the talisman' blessed essence."

"You lost me after 'profanity.' But I think I get the idea. You're the respectable magical committee that took over when the Ministry fell. You've got a real Norman Rockwell vibe here. Except for all the guns."

She looked right at Harry. Suddenly, he was thinking that maybe he would have been better off if the guys in the van had been a hit squad.

"Come with me."

She took him into a soundproofed side room. After the noise of the factory floor, the room was spooky quiet. There were stained-glass windows suspended by wires from the rafters. More angelic script cut into the floor, this time in the shape of a cross. There was an altar at one end of the room. The other end looked like Frankenstein's lab. There were celestial maps of the universe looking down from Heaven (Harry had seen the reverse maps Downunder). The machine that surrounding the operating theatre could have been anything. Part of a personal nuclear power plant or one of the alien rooms from Forbidden Planet.

Harry waited for the angel to say something. He wanted to know why she had dragged him down there, but he was not about to be the first one to blink. He turned and found her over by the altar, brushing Communion-wafer crumbs into her hand. She gently dropped them into a trash can beside the altar, then bowed her head and crossed herself. Not Harry knew why Lucifer and his wild bunch ended up down below. If he had to take his boss's kid so seriously that I was required to salute his dandruff, he would go stab-happy, too.

"Have you been enjoying yourself since your return?" she asked with her back to Harry.

"Not particularly."

Now she turned. She smiled. A beaming, monstrously insincere angel smile. Probably another part of her job training.

"I only ask because it seems to me that you've been having a lot of fun. Cutting people's heads off. Beating up people in bars. Blowing up whole districts. It sounds terribly fun to me. The kind of fun that I'd expect to appeal to someone like you."

"Is snatching people off the street your idea of fun? God gave you wings, so you have an everlasting get-out-of-jail-free card. You can do anything you want because everything you do is holy. Is that it?"

"Yes. As a matter of fact, it is."

"Is everything your army does holy, too? They didn't all look like angels to me. Was Auror Wellesley sweating hold water? I must have missed that."

"Auror Wellesley is a good and dedicated man who is willing to give his life in the cause of good. What are you willing to die for?"

Draco. Harry thought but bit his tongue. He didn't know if she knew about the blonde yet.

"To kill who I came here to kill. And to not be fucked with along the way."

"What if I told you that I could help you find what and who you're looking for?"

"I wouldn't believe you."

"Why?"

"Because I rode here with a gun to my head."

"Have you heard of the Golden Vigil?"

"Sounds like a community-college Goth band."

"We're an ancient order. A coalition of celestial beings and humans dedicated to protecting the world and mankind from whatever great evil seeks to destroy."

Harry snorted. Get ready for the Garden of Eden Sunday school lecture.

"Don't try to sell me the snake oil you fobbed off on your Ghostbusters out there. I've met Lucifer, lady. I've killed his generals. Those idiots are considered your 'greatest evil' and you haven't done dick all about them in thousands of years. Don't try to tell me you care now."

"You're right. I agree completely."

Anael walked over to a long wooden table and picked up what looked like a thick piece of brown cloth. When she got closer, Harry could see it was vellum.

"Lucifer is a eunuch and his armies are too busy stabbing each other in the back for us to worry too much about them. No, our real concern is the world's true enemy, the soul-split heathens who call themselves Death Eaters. The man who calls himself Lord Voldemort, Tom Riddle, is their leader."

She held up the vellum and a sigil formed there. One he had never seen before. It was not like the usual angelic or even Hellion symbols. It was practically a Rorschach blot, like someone spilled ink on the vellum, and then tried to wipe it off.

"Let me tell you a story," she says and goes to sit at the wooden table. "All little boys like stories."

As much as Harry wanted to get out of there and away from this crazy angel and her mercenary zealots next door, he was still feeling to ragged to bolt or put up too much of a fight. So he did the next best thing, and surrendered. He went to the table and sat down across from her. She spreads the vellum on the table between them. As her hands passed over it, the sigil faded away.

"At the beginning of time, the Lord God made a mistake. Frankly, to some of us, He made two mistakes, but since He likes you talking monkeys, we can't fix that one. So we turn our attention to the first great mistake."

She passed her hand over the vellum and images of rough glass globes appeared, like pen-and-ink drawings. As Anael talked, the drawings began to glow.

"When the Lord brought life to the universe, He did it by spreading His divine light throughout the dark. He breathed His light into glass vessels that He hung in the sky like the stars that would come much later. We, the angelic order, were born from this light. And we helped to spread it through Creation. Once, as the Lord blew light into a vessel, He blew in a bit too much and the vessel shattered. His divine light fell into the void and onto the worlds we were building. That falling light was the beginning of life in the universe."

Like a Disney cartoon, the vessels on the vellum cracked open, turning into squirming a little one cell organisms.

"But some of the divine light landed between the worlds. Some of it fell into the deep unformed void between that is nothing but boiling chaos. Since the Lord was now enchanted by the life growing on His worlds, we never bothered to look too closely into that far void. We all now regret that decision."

She waved her hand and the villain images disappeared, like lines on an Etch-a-Sketch. She laid her palm on the vellum, and a roiling, crawling blackness sept across it.

"As both angels and lower life"- she nodded in Harry's direction - "were born from divine light, so was something else. In the chaos grew another sort of life, very much like angels, but different. Wellesley and some of his men describe It as 'Chaos', which is as good an explanation as your little brains can grasp."

Harry put his hand on the black vellum that was now roiling and writhing like liquid obsidian. It looked like the knife he had under his coat. The knife was supposed to be bone, but he never found out what kind of bone.

He said, "The Death Eaters are Chaos."

"In a sense, yes." She moved her hand again and the bubbling black was gone. She talked, other images appeared from under the hand resting on the vellum.

“It doesn't hate life. Life fascinates It. The energy. The unpredictability of it. The brutality of it. When It found early humans, It settled right in, creating more horrors. Absorbing into one tribe, waging war on another. It was born in chaos. It's what It’s made of. It's what It consumes. Humans create a particularly appetizing sort of chaos to It."

"Eons ago, there was a war between us angels and the creatures It inhabited. You see, It corrupts humans, pushes them to the edges of their potential and power and twists their humanity until they are unrecognizable. They become creatures, the latest version of which you know as Death Eaters. It is one being but spreads like a virus. The resulting war raged from the earth all the way to the gates of Heaven. Neither side won."

"Wasn't Lucifer already in Hell? If you'd asked for his help, he might've come through. I don't think he'd like a bunch of mad dogs eating at Earth, either. If we were gone, who else would he screw with?"

"No one would ask the Prince of Lies for help. Don't be stupid."

"So, it was an option? But you didn't go for it. Isn't pride one of the seven deadly sins?"

She looked at him like Aunt Petunia used to look at him right before she smacked him on the ear. Like her, she pulled herself together before the big explosion.

"As I said, there was a war. Neither side could defeat the other, so we struck a bargain with the creatures. It could stay and, since humans were naturally chaotic creatures, It could satisfy it’s appetites for chaos and destruction within certain specific limits. The Golden Vigil was created to monitor this truce."

"The truce has held for millennia. But things have changed. It’s activities started becoming more bold and reckless. It openly attacks humans. It is involved in wars. Terrorism. Drug and weapons trading. And now It’s leader has taken over."

She took her hand off the vellum and started folding it up. "When we heard that Harry Potter had returned to Earth, naturally we thought that you might be the cause of the trouble."

"What the hell are you talking about?"

"Please don't use profanity here." She set the vellum aside. "I'm talking about you, you fool. You are the monster who kills monsters. Do you think we don't know what you were doing in Hell? Fallen angels are still angels. We notice when someone kills them. You have quite a reputation in the celestial realms. That's why you're here."

"I'm not a monster. I'm just a kid."

"You're a monster to someone. In the Inferno, you're the bogeyman who frightens the bogeyman. And you've brought your talent for destruction back here to Earth. That's why you're here. In case you haven't noticed, this is a job interview."

And that was the single scariest thing Harry had heard anyone say since he came home. This angel was making his skin crawl in ways that even Voldemort couldn't.

"I already have a job, thanks. I'd be doing it if you let me."

"You're weak. I can smell the damage from the recent injuries. That's the only reason you're here and alive. When we thought that you were in league with the Death Eaters, there was a death warrant on your head. But after your encounter with Tom Riddle, that seems doubtful."

"He's one of them."

She nodded. "He's the offspring of one of the originals, the immortal creatures, but yes. However, unlike It, he can, in fact, die, and he's obsessed with preventing that inevitability. I thought you would've understood that by now."

"I think I met the Chaos in Hell once. In the arena. Is that possible?"

"Unlike the dead, It can move anywhere in the universe, including into and out of the Underworld. So, yes, you could have easily met It. What happened?"

"Lucifer was pissed. He threw the thing out."

"No doubt hoping It would return to Earth to wreak havoc and leave his disgusting kingdom to him alone. How brave."

"He did walk right up to It and order It out. Have you ever walked right up and started a fight with an original?" She didn't answer. "Anyway, if something has upset the balance of the universe, it probably means that we're looking for the same person. Tom Riddle."

"Excellent. We have a common enemy. You'll join the Vigil and we will fight the forces of chaos together"

"No thanks. Your little war sounds like fun, but I have my own work to do."

Anael said, "This is God's work."

Harry got up from the table and walked away across the room. He needed to be careful. He didn't want to say the wrong thing when she knew that he was hurt. He had filled Snape's lighter earlier, so he took out his cigarettes and sparked one. He took a couple of big puffs and flicked the ashes onto her altar He'd admit it. He was not good at careful.

"Where was God when I was stuck down there?" He asked her. "If you know about me, then you knew I'd been dragged down there alive and was being tortured. But do you Hosanna-singing sons of bitches couldn't spare one lousy angel to help me out?"

"Maybe God thought you were where you belonged."

"He was right. You know why? Because I got to see exactly how the wheels turn in that part of the universe. Now you've given me a little snapshot of Heaven. You Heaven-and-Hell types are just the same shakedown artists in different uniforms."

He ground the remains of his cigarette into the altar and left them. "All of you celestial pricks. Lucifer's psychos in God's lapdogs, you're out for yourselves, just like everybody else. You don't care about the world. You cut a deal with the Chaos. I wonder why?"

Anael stood, very tall and straight, with her hands folded in front of her.

"Tell me. Enlighten me, Harry Potter."

"Because It made it to Heaven. Got right up to the gates. So, you cut a deal. You sent the wolf down here among the sheep and asked It to behave. And if It didn't, oh well. It's just a few ewes being slaughtered. But now the wolf is hungrier than ever, and you know that sooner or later, It’s going to come knocking on Heaven's door."

Anael shook her head and gave Harry that creepy, benevolent-angel smile again.

"You make me so sad, Mr. Potter."

"Don't call me that."

"All right, Harry."

"Don't call me that either."

"I hadn't realized how all those years in the Abyss had warped your mind. You've completely lost your ability to feel empathy. I've told you what was coming for humanity, yet you won't lift a finger to prevent it." She was walking over to Harry, like a kindergarten teacher about to take the white glue away from a kid who won't stop eating it. "Don't you feel anything for anyone?"

"Yes," Harry blurted out before he could stop himself. Too late now. "And he was tortured for years under Voldemort's hand. And you didn't do anything about that, either, did you?"

"I can help you heal. Your body and your soul. You were an empty vessel when you went into the Abyss and it filled you with poison. Let me fill you with the Lord's divine light."

She was throwing some hard-core angel hoodoo Harry's way. Trying to get control of his tiny, expendable monkey brain. She wasn't getting anywhere. Lucretia Borgia wasn't his type.

"Let me help you, my son." She reached out and took both of his hands in hers. "Become part of God's great plan."

"No."

Her face turned red as soon as she made contact with Harry’s skin and she screamed. Tears were streaming down her face. She took Harry's hand again, as if to check the reaction, and then dropped it.

"Abomination," she whispered. Then she screamed, "Abomination!"

Downunder, one of the things the dead had complained about was how Heaven had disarmed them before tossing them into the garbage dump. Every angel was born with a weapon. Not something they can lose, but something that's part of them. A flaming sword. They manifested it with a thought and used it like handheld nuke. Harry had never seen one before Anael manifested her sword in the soundproof chapel.

He was still looking at it, kind of hypnotized by thing, when she stuck it through him. He felt it go through his stomach and come out his back, burning and freezing at the same time.

He reacted without further thought. He let himself fall backwards, landing behind the altar, and curled into the shadow behind it. As the angel screamed above him and lunged forward again to finish him off, Harry closed his eyes and let the darkness of the shadow seep through him.

 


	14. Before Twelve

Harry dreamt that he was back on Earth. He dreamt that he had escaped from Azazel and all the pain madness of the underworld. He was home and sitting with Draco. But something is wrong. Draco is screaming, yelling at him to wake up, to hold on. His body was being yanked, pulled about in different directions. He was having trouble keeping his eyes open and he sees blue skies. He was waking up in the cemetery. He was home. It wasn't a dream. But why is the moon out during the day? It's not the moon. It's a light. That's not the sky. It's a blue ceiling. Harry knows the smell of this place, but it's name is lost in some darkened detour in his brain.

~~~

"I was dead."

"Pretty much," said Kinski. He was leaning over Harry, shining a light into his eyes as he lay on his exam table. "But Draco poured a whole bottle of white nightshade elixir down your throat. It kept your soul from wandering away. After that, it was just a matter of getting you over here and kickstarting your body. How do you feel?"

"All right. Tired, but all right."

Several of Kinski's rocks were arranged around the wound in his stomach. Others around his head, arms, and legs. The doc took the stones off of him, one by one.

Draco was at the other end of the table. His normally fair skin was white as a sheet and his jaw was clenched tight. He was supporting himself on the table, leaning with his hands locked around the lip close to Harry's boot-clad feet. His grey eyes were narrowed and the look he was giving Harry made him long for the ice and fire of Anael's blade again. He looked furious.

Putting that conversation off for a moment, Harry turned to Kinski.

"I figured out one of your secrets."

"Which one would that be?"

" The rocks. They're glass, aren't they? The glass from the angel's story. Glass all full of divine light. Where did you get them?"

"You can find anything on eBay."

"What. Happened." Harry flinched but swung his legs over the edge of the table and tried to stand. His vision blurred and his head swam. He sat back down and turned to Draco. The blonde's voice was deathly quiet. His knuckles were white and he looked like he hadn't blinked in a very long time.

Kinski handed him a glass of some stinking brown tea.

"Drink that down. All of it. Don't sip it."

Harry downed the tea in three long gulps. It was thick and hot and he could feel little bits of twigs and leaves in his mouth. He handed the glass back to Kinski.

"Thanks. That was disgusting." He looked at his furious partner and sighed before relaying the story to him.

By the time he was done, the fiery wrath had left his eyes and worry had replaced it. "You're sure she said 'Abomination'?"

"She was screaming it right in my face. I'm sure."

Draco pursed his lips. "Angels don't use the word Abomination lightly. You're...something else to her. Did she touch you?"

Harry nodded, "Right before she started screaming. She dropped my hands real quick, said it quietly, then she grabbed one again, like she was checking. That was when she started screaming and trying to kill me."

Both Kinski's and Draco's brows were furrowed when Harry looked up from pulling his shirts back on. "What?"

Draco looked to Kinski, who sucked his teeth. "I'm not sure...angels have the ability to see specific facts and glean certain understandings when they touch a human. It could mean anything but she wouldn't have had such a strong reaction if she hadn't gotten something from you."

Harry shrugged, "Should I be worried?"

"Only about the fact that you're on her radar now. Angels tend to hold grudges." Draco looked grim.

Draco scoffed. "We need to leave now. We have things to do and I don't want to be in this place anymore." He walked out without a backward glance, trusting Harry to follow him.

Harry slid off the table to try out his feet. What do you know? He didn't fall over or want to throw to. It was the little thing that made life special. "Gotta go," he quirked a quick smile at Kinski before following Draco out.

~~~

Harry threw the dead bolt when he closed the motel room door. He was pissed. Draco had insisted that he lay low for the night due to Anael probably wanting his head on a stick, so he had ventured out alone to complete a number of necessary errands. Harry had put up a fight about leaving the man on his own but the blonde had simply stared at him until he submitted. Damn, but those icy grey eyes could be disarming. Plus, he had promised he'd be back before morning, so Harry had relented.

Harry pulled off his jacket and wadded it up in a ball before throwing it at the end of the bed. It looked pretty rough. Praise Lucifer that his jeans were black. Blood wasn't so obvious on them. Unfortunately, his shirt hadn't been quite so lucky. He grabbed the back collar and pulled it over his head. Holding it up to the light, he frowned at the large, blade tear in the lower portion of the cotton. It wasn't so obvious that he couldn't wear it to buy a new shirt, but the blood was pretty damning.

After fifteen minutes standing over the dingy bathroom sink, furiously scrubbing at the blood stains adorning the cotton, he gave up. It would have to do. He pulled the now wet cotton back on and prep to leave the motel. After all, going across the street didn't break his promise to Draco to lay low. He still packed Azazel's knife though, just in case.

With the jacket tucked under his arm, on a one way trip to the trash can in the alley, he locked up the room and slipped out the back door at the end of the hall.

Anael was waiting in the alley, standing there like the angel of death in librarian drag. Harry dropped the coat and took a couple of steps into the alley so his back wasn't pinned to the wall.

He said, "You're big on the Fortune magazine look. Know any decent dry cleaners around here?"

She shook her head and shot poison darts at him with her eyes. Or she wished she could.

"I offered you help. Help and redemption. You turned me down."

"You helped me so much that I had to get glued back together by Doc Kinski."

"Do not speak that name in front of me!" she shouted. "He is the only creature alive more vile than you."

"Thanks. You hating Kinski makes me feel a lot better about the guy. Maybe I'll let him cut me open some more, have a real play date."

"Why wait? I can do that for you right now."

"Yeah, but when Kinski cuts me, he won't have a hard-on while he's doing it."

"You dare speak to an angel of the Lord that way?"

"If I hurt your feelings, get God down here so I can tell Him to His face."

"Maybe you are worse than Kinski."

"You're the most useless thing I've ever met. Even the worst deado has a purpose. What's yours? You can't keep a treaty from falling apart that might destroy the world. You don't even go after Voldemort. Why is that?"

"Don't you dare interrogate me. We've been looking for Voldemort for many years."

"But that's not the same as finding him, is it? I mean, the way no one seems to be dealing with the guy makes me wonder if there isn't something else going on."

"We are agents of Heaven and do its bidding."

"And while you do, you let Death Eaters roam around free, slaughtering people, hoping they'll lead you back to the big boy. How many people have they killed in the last six years and you didn't do anything about it?"

"You're suddenly so concerned abut death? People die around you every day and you barely seem to notice. What does that make you?"

"Fuck you, angel. Fuck you and all God's little prison bitches. He slips you some cigarettes and a con job smile and you run off to do his dirty work for him. Go and scare some sinners. No one's listening to you here."

Harry couldn't read angels the way he could humans, but he could read a fighter's body. Anael shifted slightly, sliding one foot back a few millimetres at a time, letting her weight settle on her back leg.

"God can still save you, Abomination. He can't change the vile thing you are, but through me he can save you from perdition."

"If it's all the same to you, I'd rather go to Hell."

"So be it."

Anael must have been holding herself back before. She manifested her flaming sword incredibly fast and shot forward like a bullet. Thing was, Harry was pretty fast, too. Especially when he knew what an opponent was going to do. Before she charged him, he already had the blade out, and was sidestepping her. When she blasted forward at him, she also impaled herself on the blade.

Anael froze for a second, stunned to find her angelic body sliced through. That gave Harry a chance to give the blade a sight turn so that the sharp barbs dug into her. She let out a monstrous roar, something to rattle Heaven's gates. Buildings shuddered and car alarms went off. Harry couldn't let go of the blade to cover his ears. Her scream was like a vice crushing his skull.

She swung her sword at his head and tried to move forward, but Harry ducked and she was stuck on the blade.

Anael was strong. She lunged at him, but each time she moved, she just drove the blade's razor barbs deeper into her body. She stopped moving and stood there bleeding. Turning pale. After a few minutes, her sword dimmed and flickered out. She refused to fall. She would not submit to an Abomination. If he didn't hate her so much already, Harry would probably have liked her.

Then she crumbled all at once. Like someone pulled the plug and shut her down. Harry kelt with her and when she was flat on her back, he turned the blade to release the barbs, pulling it from her chest.

Slipping it back inside his boot, he went over to have a look at her. Her eyes were open, and even though she was looking up, Harry knew she was not looking at the sky. She was looking a lot farther away than that. He wondered what she saw.

"You'll suffer for this, Abomination. Do you know that? God sees everything and He sees you."

"Does He see you? I have an idea. Call God to come down and save you." Harry looked up at the sky with her. "Nothing." He looked down again and shrugged. "I guess you're expendable, too."

"I hate you more than anything I've ever seen or known."

"There we go. The truth. You hate me. Not for God's sake, but for hours. Feels good, doesn't it? Feels human."

Harry wondered if an angel could die the way humans did. He wondered what happened to their bodies. Did their spirt go back to Heaven or Hell or did they just evaporate?

He knelt by Anael's head. She looked up at him, sort of blank.

'I've been thinking about it. Remember when I asked you why God left me in the Underworld and you said He probably thought I was where I should be? Maybe He thought I should be here today. To face you down in this alley. Maybe He wants me to finish what I came here for, only to do that, I had to get past you first. It's something for both of us to think about."

Anael straightened out her arm and tried to manifest her sword. A fighter to the end. Maybe he did like her a little after all. No. He didn't.

He didn't really believe that angels could die the way human did. And God wouldn't let an important one like Anael go so easily. Wellesley and his Golden Vigil and half the remaining Aurors were probably on their way over right then. Time for Harry to find a store, buy some clothes, and generally, not be there.

~~~

After running his errands, and killing hell of a lot more time than he needed to, Harry did a slow walk-by at the motel to get a look in the alley. Anael wasn't there. There was no blood. No scorch mark from her sword. No sign anything had ever happened there. Thank you Wellesley.

He figured he would be a happy camper if between that moment, when he killed Voldemort, and when he was back Downunder, he didn't have to speak to anyone. But that wasn't how it was going to work out. He opened up the motel room door and found it empty. He frowned. It was well past dark and Draco should've been back hours before.

Making up his mind, he slipped into a shadow and came out a few blocks away from Draco's hideout. There was a little bodega on the corner. After checking to make sure everything was A-OK, he stepped into a shadow beside it. Two grey-haired man sitting on plastic milk crates and drinking beer ignored the weird white boy doing weird-white-boy stuff.

Draco store was open. That wasn't so bad all of its own. The door opened and closed all the time when he went in and out. But now it was standing open and had a vaguely diffuse glow that signalled a glamour was gone, like someone took soap and water and washed off.

"When did they put an apartment in over there?"

A nosy neighbour stood down the hall staring at the open door. He wanted to see it, but he wouldn't get any closer, like maybe the place was radioactive.

"Stay here," Harry told him, and reached under his jacket for the knife.

"Should you go in there? Should I call the landlord?"

Harry threw him a quick keep-talking-and-you'll-be-shitting-out-your-tongue look and he backed off. There was something really wrong with the apartment. Like the one out of tune string on a guitar. He could feel it before he even got inside. When he stepped over the threshold, something else hit. A taste and smell. Vinegar at the back of his throat.

The walls, ceiling, and floor were covered in twisting, spiky ideograms and letters, intertwined with endless spirals. Spirit faces or maybe images of God the Father, looking more like some saucer-eyed alien then a deity, were smeared around the room. The colours ran from rust to a snaky, metallic green, but Harry had smelled enough dried blood in his time to know what the basic ingredient in all those pigments was.

He stopped and he listened, waiting for something. The nosy neighbour was so freaked out, Harry could hear his heart and breathing. Don't stroke out, guy. We've got enough problems here.

Or not. He didn't feel anything. There was nothing alive in the apartment. He couldn't feel any Death Eaters, but with his own heightened senses, he figured he would know if there was an enemy lurking in the corner with the lampshade on its head. As much as he didn't want to wrestle anything magic for a while, not finding a single problem was a letdown. Finding the body was worse.

It was a man's body. Naked. Nailed face first to the wall about six feet off the ground. Someone had carefully peeled back the other layers of skin. Let them fall back like pale, fleshy leaves on a plant, leaving the muscles and bones untouched. They were only two or three drops of blood on the floor. At least Harry knew where the blood for the frescos came from. And that whoever peeled and drained a body that cleanly really knew what he or she or they were doing.

The body was nailed the wrong way around for him to see the face. He could tell from where he was that it was the body of a middle-age man. Not Draco.

He knew he should take the body down. All he would have to do was stand on a chair, yank the nails from the hands, and it would be taken care of. But he didn't want to get near it. He couldn't look away, either. His brain knew that he needed to react, but his body wouldn't go along with any of it. He only got over it by forcing himself finally.

There was a step ladder next to the refrigerator in the kitchen. Harry brought it into the living room and opened it up right below the body. Before he could start the dirty work, out of the corner of his eye he saw the nosy neighbour sticking his nosy face in what he shouldn't be.

"Oh God. Oh my God. I'm calling the cops."

Harry moved fast. Fast enough that he scared the man more than the body did. Before he could finish dialling, Harry snatched the cell phone out of his hand and peep-walked him to a window. Leaning him out and making him watch as he dropped his phone into a dumpster several floors below.

He said, "Go get it. Then you can call."

Nosy Neighbour looked at Harry like he had just told him that he was Darth Vader and that he fucked his sister, but he didn't say a word. He headed straight for the stairs.

Back at the body, Harry pulled the nails from the feet first. They were some kind of heavy concrete nail. Perfect for going through muscle and bone and into a wall stud.

With the feet free, he could now get the body down on the ground. He climbed onto the top step of the step ladder. Yanking one nail out of one hand and the other out of the other. Suddenly free, the body dropped heavily into his arms. The limbs flopped. The head tilted, snapped, and fell off.

Too much. He let go and it hit the ground.

Just as Harry was trying to decide between collapsing into a queasy heap or pulling a John Wayne, his phone rang. He thumbed it on.

"Boo. Miss me, Potter?" It was Belatrix. "I bet right about now you're wondering where my pretty little nephew is."

"How are you seeing me?"

"Look around you, baby Potter. There are eyes everywhere."

"The paintings."

"There's this thing called magic. Maybe you've heard of it." She cackled.

"Where is he?"

"Relax, sweetie. He's fine. in fact, we're having a New Year's party tonight and you're invited."

"Where?"

"Orange Grove Bungalows. It will be a blast. We're going to have a little fun so make sure you get here before midnight."

"I'll be there."

"This is a personal invitation. No guests. No plus ones. If I see a cloud of dust behind you, Draky -poo will pay the price."

"I'll be there."

"Before midnight. That's twelve. When the big hand in the little hands are straight up."

"If he gets hurt, I'm going to personally teach you the Tombstone Dog Paddle."

"Is that another scary trick you learned in the underworld?"

"No. A little thing I came up with. It's where I take you down the river. Someplace the ground is soft and wet. I break your arms and legs. Your fingers and toes. Your neck and back. I dig a hole in the wet, soft ground, put you inside, and fill it back up. Then I have a cigarette and wait for you to take your way out."

"Before twelve," said Bellatrix, and hung up.


	15. Orange Grove Condominiums

Harry picked up a sawed off shotgun and a Kevlar vest from the sketchiest pawn shop he had ever seen on the way to the address. The phone booth outside the Orange Grove Bungalows hasn't changed much since Harry was there six years ago, except that now there was a guy living in it. 

The Orange Grove was a collection of about two dozen small cabins that were twenty years past their prime before Harry went downstairs. Now they looked like a condo complex in Hiroshima the day after the bomb. The bulletproof glass in front of the check-in counter had had a good workout. In six years, no one had painted anything or cleaned the pool. There were things wiggling down in the stagnant backwash that Harry didn't even remember seeing in hell. This was where David Lynch groupies went to lose their virginity on prom night. 

There was one specific cabin in Harry was looking for, but he didn't know which yet. He walked up and down the concrete walkway that snaked between the cabins. It was New Year's Eve, so the place was crawling with skinny hookers with black metal teeth and equally skinny John's who couldn't walk straight. A lot of smells in the air. Pot. Stale cigarettes. There was a lot more piss and the weird burning plastic stink of bad crack. Those were the least offensive.

He spotted the badness near the back of the third row. It looked just like the others, but to his eyes, it pulsed with chaotic energy. The energy fields around the window and front door were brighter and the colours were more intense than the rest of the cabin. When he put his hand out, the brighter energy morphed into teeth, like a giant cartoon version of the bear trap, and snapped at him. When the civilian hookers and their johns wandered by, nothing happened. A tired looking hooker, in a miniskirt way too short for her veiny legs, wandered by alone.

Harry said, "Hey, darling, want to make some quick money?"

"I'm done for tonight, honey."

"No hanky-panky. I'm pranking a friend. I just need you to go over there and bang on the door real loud."

"How much?"

Harry pulled out a wad of money. What the hell. It was New Year's. 

"$500." 

Suddenly Miss Done for Tonight is all smiles. 

"Hell, I'd suck the shine off the doorknob for that."

He gave her the money and she stuffed it in an inside jacket pocket in case he changed his mind. 

"Don't do anything until I tell you. Then bang on the door as hard as you can and take off."

He left her by the door and went around to the back of the cabin.

He held up his hand, dropped it, and said, "Now!"

The fucker took a step forward and gave the door six or seven good wraps. She looked at Harry and emotions to her to get the hell out of there. Then he stepped through the shot three shadow into the room. He went through it fast to the Door of Memory. As he walked, he pulled the sawed-off shotgun out of his new jacket and set it down beside the door. He figured Bellatrix would have some sort of charm up to ward against weapons.

Through the door and into the cabin. Bellatrix was up front, hands on the door, trying to feel who was out there.

Harry was in the bungalow's bathroom. Draco was on the floor, his mouth closed and body stiff under the effects of petrificus. Unnecessarily, Harry out his finger to his lips.

There was a wooden plunger behind the toilet. He grabbed it and sprinted out at Bellatrix. Just before he reached her, Harry snapped the plunger's wooden handle and buried the sharp end of the bigger piece in her back.

Bellatrix screamed in pain and the sound of her voice knocked Harry back against the far wall.

She turned and smiled at Harry. Slamming her back against the wall so that the sharp end of the wooden handle punched all the way through and came out her chest. Then she reached up, pulled it out, and dropped it on the floor.

"How fun is that, huh? That's the kind of thing you would do. The Dark Lord knew you'd try something like that since your magic is gone, so he gave me a potion. Is this how you feel, Potter? It's like I could tear the world apart with my hands. Let me show you."

Harry barked a Hellion phrase and Bellatrix sank halfway into the carpet, which was sucking him down like quicksand.

She wasn't shocked or scared. She pressed her hands into the melting carpet, whispered a few words, and the quicksand reversed itself, pushing her up out of the floor. Before Harry could get out of the way, she threw a purple balls of power. Hit Harry square in the chest. He hit the back wall hard enough that some of the studs snap, leaving the wall bowed out. The body armour kept his ribs from cracking, but he felt like he got hit by the same meteor that killed the dinosaurs.

Bellatrix came over and took a good long look at Harry on the floor.

"This is the best New Year's ever. Yes, you messed up our little surprise at Spinner's End, but that's okay. He's got lots more ideas, and let me tell you, you won't like them."

With a superhuman effort, Harry pushed himself to his feet, but only got as far as propping himself on his elbows like a white-trash Sphinx. 

Bellatrix smiled and shook her head. Harry had never seen her so happy. She disappeared into the bathroom and came out levitating Draco with her wand overstretched. The blonde was still petrified but his eyes were on fire with rage.

Grinning an insane smile at Harry, she grabbed Draco by the hair and gave him a peck on the lips. Still holding his hair and bending his neck back, she turned to Harry.

"You are a failure, little boy. You were back then and you are now." She pouted at Draco. "Couldn't even keep his little boyfriend safe, could he?" 

When she leaned in to kiss her nephew again, Draco's eyes flashed to Harry's for a split second before he managed to break through her control just enough. He puffed out a stream of air. Flames burst from his mouth, right into Bellatrix's eyes. She screamed and fell to the floor.

Blind, Bellatrix screamed hexes that shot around the room, blasting holes in the walls and roof. Harry kept his head down until she was about an arm's length away. The he reached into the shadow under the bed and pulled out the sawed-off. Pressing it against her forehead, he gave her both barrels. 

One minute, Bellatrix Lestrange had a head and the next moment she didn't. 

I hope Beelzebub makes you his bitch in Hell.

The spells on him broke as soon as she died and Draco fell to the floor. Shaking, he pulled himself to his feet before rushing to Harry's side. Pale hands flew over his body as Draco murmured various healing spells under his breath. 

Suddenly able to breathe, Harry rolled onto his back and started calculating the odds that the motel manager or a scared john had called the cops. No reason to wait and find out. Draco grabbed him and pulled him, half walking, half falling, into the shadow by the door.

They came out in the hallway by Draco's hideout. The door was closed and yellow-and-black crime-scene tape was tacked up over the entrance. Draco tore it down and opened the door. He helped Harry over to the sofa, where he collapsed. The blonde then dropped to his knees and rummaged in the potions and elixirs scattered across the floor. He came up with a cracked blue bottle, went back into the hall, and ran a line of liquid all the way around the door frame. There was the faint aetheric glow of the glamour as it turned the door back back into a blank wall.

He then went to the kitchen and came back with a cold cloth. Harry lay-back and Draco draped it over his forehead. The brunette ran a body check, like he used to do after a night in the arena. Flex, move, feel, and evaluate each part of his body, starting with the feet and moving up. Feet and legs worked. Knees bent, though one was still a little stiff. Gut and ribs were about the same. Arms, neck, and skull intact. Hands and fingers flexed. He was all right. He was just having a hard time getting his breath after Bellatrix's fireball love tab. He shrugged off his coat, peeled off the ruined body armour, and dropped it on the floor.

Draco was on the floor again, clinking bottles together, looking for useable potions. He came back to the sofa with a couple. 

"These aren't my first choices, but they will do. Drink this."

"What is it?"

"Mustika Pearl. From Turkey. You'll feel stronger and heal faster."

"Christ. It taste like boiled goddamn roadkill."

"Have some of this now. You'll feel very good and it will help wash away the taste of the other."

He was right. The second one was warm and earthy, with a slightly better edge. 

"That's nice. What is it?" 

"Vin Mariani. Red wine and cocaine."

He didn't know if it was the Vin or the Pearl, but within a few minutes, he felt sort of like himself again. Shaky, hot, glued-together version, but definitely him. 

"Don't tell anyone," he said, "but every rotten thing that's happened since I got back is my fault."  
"What does that mean?" asked Draco.

"Wait. It gets better. Because I came back, because I'm still alive, Voldemort is going to tear the world down to get to me. I have a nasty feeling that the reason Anael tried to kill me is the same reason he's been after me my whole life. I should have some something a long time ago. But I was flat-out chickenshit."

Draco asked, "How can that be possible? You didn't even know about that shit until two days ago."

"I knew about it. Figured it out when I was Downunder. Not what was going on, but I knew there was something wrong with me. What has Voldemort wanted from me, as long as I've been alive? My life. There has to be a reason for that. Azazel once told me that he pulled me from the arena because with me, he could rule down there. He said he saved me from somewhere dark. Not empty, but filled with nothing. That's why Voldemort wants me."

Draco was a squinting at him. "Because he's in Nothing?"

"Because he wants me in Nothing. I've been through twelve doors in the Room of Thirteen Doors. I've never gone through the thirteenth. I've always been afraid of it. All the other doors are marked with a symbol. A sun. A crescent moon. A frozen lake. Only the thirteenth door is blank. There's nothing on it. It's the Door of Nothing. That's where the Chaos is. That's where Voldemort will be. And I could have gone there anytime since Azazel gave me the key. Years ago. But I was too afraid of that blank door."

"You're going to go there now?" asked Draco.

"I should be there already." Harry stood up and made to walk out the door. A firm hand on his arm stopped him. He looked up into Draco's face. The blonde looked fiercely determined.

"Not without me you aren't."


	16. Through the Thirteeth Door

The thirteenth door looked older and more battered than the others. If the other doors were portals to different planes and places in the universe, the thirteenth was the entrance to a prison. Strange sound leaked through it. Growls. Vibrations. A faint stink of vinegar. What could have been the wind or voices whispering. A slow but relentless scratching, like something was trying to dig its way out.

Draco gave him a swift nod, and moved to step closer to the Door, but Harry caught his wrist. Ignoring the questioning look he gave him, Harry pulled the blonde close and cupped his face in his hands, stroking his thumbs along the sharp cheekbones. He simply looked at him for a long moment before pulling him forward and pressing his lips to Draco’s. The blonde froze and Harry steeled himself for rejection but a moment later, he felt soft lips move against his own. Draco groaned into the kiss, his eyes fluttered shut and brought his hands up to tangle in Harry’s hair. Before he could, Harry dropped one hand from Draco’s face to his shoulder and pinched hard on the largest nerve. Draco stiffened before he went limp and Harry caught him against his chest.

Dragging the unconscious man across the Room, Harry opened the Door of Serenity, guaranteed to provide a safe and comfortable escape. He pressed a kiss to Draco’s temple and leaned down to his ear.

“I'm sorry love, but I can't risk you, not again. You're still whole, human and I love you too much to let anything happen to you. I don't know if the bond will help with whatever is going to happen in there, but if it doesn't, know that I love you, and that I'm sorry.”

With that, Harry, let Draco’s limp form fall through the open Doorway and slammed it shut behind him.

Wiping a hand down his face and shaking his head to clear it, Harry strode back across the Room, threw the bolt and opened the Door of Nothing.

The name was pretty damned apt. Some of the other doors, he still couldn't figure out. What did the Door of Abandoned Melancholy mean? But the Door of Nothing was right on the money.

There was nothing beyond the door. Not darkness. Not emptiness. Nothing. It was the total and absolute absence of everything. Especially light.

He moved to step inside and pulled the door closed. Immediately he could hear sounds all around him. Scurrying, secret sounds. Bugs under dry leaves. Something wet pulled it self through mud. Hungry thanks, chewing their cloths and grinding their teeth. Things touched him in the dark in the nothing. They crawled on him and tried to work their way under his clothes. Harry couldn't move. He didn't know where to go. Then he remembered the thing Voldemort left for him because he knew that sooner or later, Harry would be standing there. He took out the lighter.

Let there be light.

The Zippo flared, looking like an oil-well fire in all that lightless empty space. A billion soft, pale, half-formed anti-angels limped back into the dark. Their big blank eyes glittered like black chrome. The Chaos was crowded into every inch of the chaotic non-space. It lived piled on top of itself, like dead and dying angels. The piles of bodies looked like pictures of Auschwitz. This was what heaven must have looked like after Lucifer's war.

He started walking, the wall of Chaos parting like the Red Sea, and closing in behind him.

He was moving just to move. Standing still felt like asking for trouble. But every direction looked exactly the same to Harry. He couldn't tell if he was walking on something solid or just the idea of something. One minute, it felt like he was on hard packed dirt, and the next, he was sinking into sponge cake. He didn't stop or slow down. He kept walking, like he knew exactly where he was going.

Chaos put It’s glowing hand on Harry's arm. He looked at It like he talked to zombie angels every day. It's face was half-baked dough. He couldn't quite bring It into focus.

"He's waiting for you. Straight ahead. We've all been so looking forward to this."

"Hang around, ugly. When I'm done with him, the two of us can get some dim sum before I kill you as well."

It laughed, turned It’s sluglike head, and dissolved into the writhing mass of Chaos. It picked up his laugh and it spread out across the colony, so that in just a few seconds the sound surrounded Harry. Thundered down on him from a billion throats like a storm. It rattled every molecule in his body. He was being mugged with sound. He turned and shoved the lighter straight into the heart of the closest horde of Chaos. It shrieked and scattered. He shoved the lighter into another horde. And another. It still surrounded them, but It wasn’t laughing anymore. And It kept It’s distance.

Straight ahead was Draco's family home. Malfoy Manor. He didn't bother knocking.

Memory led him straight through to the dining room, the same room he had so recently rescued Draco from. It looked exactly the same. Harry shivered at the sight of the coiled chain and magic circle that had held Draco at the far end of the room.

“I suppose you won't believe me, but it is rather good to see you again, Mr. Potter.”

He sounded exactly the same. He didn't look the same, though. He looked quite like the young version of Tom Riddle Harry had met in the Chamber of Secrets in second year. Older, but clearly the same person. Harry couldn't tell if Voldemort had suddenly grown vain and used magic to change his appearance or if things were fundamentally different in here. He didn't ask.

"When you spend as many years as I have with no one of worth to talk to, it's lovely to find again someone who can challenge. Who isn't here to kiss my robes and grovel at my feet.”

"That's funny. I always thought you and your Death Eaters were best buds. I also thought you loved that shit. Lived for it."

‘I like to liken them to attack dogs. It's a better way of putting it. The dog is supposedly man's best friend, but it doesn't mean you're going to talk to me about anything important. You pet a dog. You feed the dog. You put it out back to go to henhouse. Reward it when it's been good. Punish it when it's bad. That's about it."

"Great, if your plan was to sit out here in an empty house in the middle of fuck all, surrounded by talking army aunts. Wow. You really are a Lord. I never saw that one coming."

"You see? Anyone else, I would have killed him by now. But noise like that. Criticism. After all these years, it's all right coming from you. I have a certain respect for you Harry Potter."

"That's why you had to kill me."

"But I didn't kill you, did I? Something stopped it, and did the other thing instead."

"Can you even say it? You sent me to Hell."

Riddle waved a pale, aristocratic hand in front of his face. "I don't want to reopen old wounds. That's not why I brought you here. And before you tell me you found me on your own, we both know that I made sure that you would find me right when you needed to."

"If you wanted me here so bad, why didn't you just send up a flare or have your Chaos forward me a Google map link?"

"Because I had to know that you could do it. I haven't seen you in six years. Maybe the air in The Underworld or all those knocks on the head in the arena turned your brains to butterscotch putting. I had to see work it out and here you are. I also had to make sure that my theory was correct."

Harry was not at all surprised by his arrogance and bullshit. But what was strange about him was how he seemed exactly the same. Had he really been sitting there alone for six years? That was worse than what happened to Harry. Harry was the one who aged, but he saw and did a few things. He didn't just crawl up his own teenybopper ass for a decade. He tried to imagine six years, sitting in a dollhouse version of a house, reading magic books and not talking to anyone but your pet thugs and talking roaches. If Tom Riddle wasn't crazy before, he had definitely joined the banana army at some point.

"I had to light the match. I needed to bring you here. Stage one was why I formed an alliance with the disgusting creatures, the Chaos. To take control of the world."

He smiled at Harry like he just got all A's on his report card.

"Why would anyone want to run the world?" Harry asked. "It sounds like a huge pain in the ass."

"That's just stage one. If all I wanted was to take over the world, believe me, my Death Eaters and I could've done it already."

"What do you want the world for?"

"In any military campaign, you need a few basic things. Troops. Equipment. Support. Supply lines, that kind of thing. Earth is the perfect staging area for that."

"When I knew you, all you wanted was to take over the Wizarding world and eliminate Muggleborns. Now you want to be Patton, too? What's wrong with you?"

Voldemort went to a large ebony desk, piled high with books, writing paper, and maps of the universe, from Heaven looking down and from Hell looking up. He grabbed an old book about the size and weight of a bag of cement and showed Harry the pages he'd been studying. A single word crossed the two pages on the spread: L'Infernus. Below that was a detailed map of Hell's topography.

"We're invading Hell. I have the troops and the plan. You know Hell's strengths and weaknesses. You've already softened the place up for invasion. How many of Lucifer's generals have you killed? A dozen? Two? More?"

"You want to rule this world, a not particularly great place, so you can take over an even worse place? Is that basically it? That's why you ruined me, ruined Draco, and fucked over the entire Wizarding world? What do you want with help? It's already on the verge of a civil war. You want to walk into the middle of warring Hellions?"

"With the Chaos and you at my side, yes. I really do. Because with our confined strength and your contacts with Lucifer's generals, we could find which to kill and which will make good allies. Then march in and take Hell, just the way we took Earth. Once we secure it, we will combine the armies from Earth and Hell with the Chaos. Then go to stage three."

“You want to invade Heaven.”

“I want to storm Heaven. I want to rip open the Pearly Gates and throw them from the firmament. I want to see all nine ranks of angels on their knees bowing down to the Death Eaters that conquered them. And I want to throw out that senile old bastard that lords over it. Ship Him off to a retirement home for old deities. He can get a duplex with Zeus or Odin. He ruined the universe at the beginning of time and He’s been ruining it ever since. He needs to be off playing chess and power walking, not running the fundamental laws of time and space. One day, He’s going to misplace something, get distracted, and forget about something small, like air. Then where will we be? I know you know that I'm right. I know how you think.”

Harry looked at him. He didn't know what else to do. He was right, of course. He agreed with pretty much everything he said about Heaven and Hell. He wouldn't mind seeing God and Lucifer stuck on a cruise ship - shuffleboard, all-day buffets, a decent band in the bar, and a passable magic act in the lounge for all eternity. But the idea of replacing the current fuckups with Voldemort? That part didn't scan and he knew Harry would never go for it.

“So, I help you become the new Yahweh, and what do I get out of it?”

“The world. It can be yours. And your parents. Sirius Black, Remus Lupin, Nymphadora Tonks, Cedric Diggory, Fred Weasley - everyone who has died who you want back. Not to mention,” he smiled oily, “young Mr. Malfoy. You and he can live forever. If you want him to. Once we are in charge, we can control all of that.”

“Who gets Hell? The Chaos?”

“Who better to run the place of tormentors than a race of natural-born torturers and killers?”

That wasn't what Harry had been expecting. He didn't know what he thought would be waiting for him there in Never Never Land , but it wasn't this. He came ready to fight Genghis Khan and he walked in on a shut-in playing the biggest Dungeons and Dragons game in history.

“You're right. I can't think of anyone better suited to run the Underworld than the Chaos.”

He walked around the room, admiring how detailed this memory must be to have built this place. He stopped at a bin full of maps that ran from the floor to the ceiling. City maps. World maps. Maps of time and celestial mechanics. Maps of the edges of the universe. He was still holding Snape’s lighter. He flicked it and held it to one of the maps.

‘What are you doing over there, Potter?”

Old maps were printed on good, heavy paper stock. They burnt well. Old ones were dry enough to burn fast. When Riddle noticed what Harry was doing and ran to the maps, Harry used the light to fire up the books and papers on his desk.

“Stop it!” he yelled.

Harry held the lighter to a book on his lectern. The book was written in Aramaic. It looked very rare and expensive.

“Stop it!”

That was the thing he’d been waiting for. His magic was off in here, blocked or dampened by the Nothing. The only thing he seemed able to do was manifest the house. And now he was really losing his shit; getting sloppy with his control. At his next cry, the house was knocked off its foundations and cracked the walls. Books, globes, and old specimen jars flew off the shelves. Harry lost his balance and knocked over a hanging human skeleton.

“The problem, Tom, is you only know me from the old days when that little speech of yours might actually have worked. I would have done anything to see my parents again back then. I would have sacrificed the world to save the people I loved. But I’ve changed, I only love one person now, and I'm way too fucking selfish to chance you being around to take him away from me. All that matters now is one thing. You killed my parents and I'm going to kill you.”

Harry set fire to anatomy charts and diagrams of mystical automata.

Riddle used a throw rug to smother the fire on the lectern and Harry knew his theory about his magic was correct.

Riddle was panicking, “When I'm sitting on my golden throne in the sky, I'm going to make you and your little bitch my special project.”

Riddle blurred across the room at Harry, faster than he could ever move before. He knocked Harry out of the way so that he could rescue the papers that had been set on fire. He was doing quite well at putting out the fire for a few seconds, but then the black knife Harry had stuck in his side when he cuffed him out of the way really started to hurt. He reached around to take the knife out. But Harry was pretty fast, too. He leapt and rolled, jamming his boot heel into the hilt, plunging the demon knife another six inches into his side. Riddle groaned and fell on his face.

Harry climbed on top of him and ripped the knife out with his left hand. He got his right arm around his throat and stabbed up, slipping the blade between his ribs and into his heart. Riddle shuddered and so did the house. The walls and ceiling cracked. Bricks, lath, and plaster rained down on them. Harry pushed the knife in farther and heard the upstairs collapse.

A bookcase came loose from the wall and crashed down on top of him. His distraction was enough and Riddle threw an elbow and knocked Harry onto his back. Then he was on top of him. Harry got the knife up in time and jammed it right back between Riddle’s ribs. But he did a trick Harry didn't know he could do.

He'd been doing more with the Chaos than exchanging sea stories and brownie recipes. He slipped his hand through Harry’s body and right into his chest. Instantly, Harry was cold and nauseous as his fingertips touched the key. Waves of pain and sickness washed over him, but with every one, he twisted the knife deeper into him.

The mansion walls were dust and the floor was sagging under their weight. A great, black dome of Nothingness hung over their heads. Then even the floor was gone and they were in the dark, surrounded by the chittering, scuttling voices of the Chaos, the only reminder than they hadn’t fallen out of the universe completely.

Harry shouted Hellion control phrases and poison words into Riddle’s ear. He dug his hand into Harry’s chest and got his fingers around the key. The whole universe shifted, like a car sliding on black ice. Harry dragged the black blade between Riddle’s ribs, unable to do anything else as his vision tunnelled. Riddle chattered in Aramaic, trying to fill Harry's head with dread and confusion. Luckily, he was already confused and full of dread, so the words or spell or whatever he was attempting was kind of redundant.

The darkness shredded around them. Streaks of something leaked through the opaque walls of Nothing. The Chaos screamed as light burned into their hiding place.

They were falling. Or things were swirling past them. Harry couldn't tell which. He caught glimpses of the Room of Thirteen Doors. Every time Riddle tried to rip the key from his chest, the room shifted at the centre of time and space, warping the universe.

Time flowed like lava. Riddle pulled on the key and the pain lasted a million years. The room swirled by, larger than the wheel universe. One door. A dozen. A million. A blinding zoetrope as doors opened, closed, appeared, and disappeared.

They were crushed to the size of atoms. They expanded to fill the Milky Way. Harry jerked the blade from Riddle’s side and swept it through the centre of a star. Slashed the white-hot blade through the thin fabric that separated the Chaos’ realm from his own. The Chaos screamed and scattered as light flooded inside. It tried to patch the holes, but Harry kept slashing new ones. The Chaos’ bubble of Nothingness swelled and exploded, scattering It’s burning wreckage away from the light and into the frozen void on the far edge of the universe.

The next time the room appeared, Harry raised the knife and sliced down through Riddle’s arm. His screams shook the nearby planets. He pulled the severed hand from his chest and dove for the room. Getting one hand around the edge of the Door of Shadows, he pulled himself inside. Riddle hung on with his one good hand and drags himself inside before Harry could slam the Door.

They both collapsed on the stones. Harry aught his breath and got to his feet. Riddle was on his back, cradling his severed arm to his chest. He was pale and shaking, robes soaked through with blood. Harry had been looking forward to killing him for so long and now he was spoiling it. It his fantasies, he killed the murderer, the psychopath Voldemort. But this little guy on the floor, shivering like a goldfish that had fallen out of its bowl, wasn't the monster he came to slay.

Riddle said something, but Harry couldn't hear him. He said it again, but still too low to hear. Harry leaned his ear to his mouth when he said it again. It was Hellion; he couldn't understand the world, but there was a crunch that Harry had heard enough times in the arena to know that it was either the sound of a bone breaking or being magically knit back together. This being Riddle, of course, it was a bit of both, with something worse thrown in just for fun.

Something white and larvalike protruded from where Riddle’s right arm used to be. Sounds de came from beneath his skin, like termites eating glass. A final crunch and Riddle’s arm ripped from his should as a faintly glowing new one emerged to take its place. Riddle’s eyes popped open. Suddenly, he was back to being the monster Harry had dreamed of killing. However, there was something about this new Riddle that made every cell in Harry's body decide simultaneously that they would like to be at least a continent away from him.

Riddle sat up and smiled. He knew exactly where he was. The space was too small and he was too fast for Harry to try taking his new arm off. There was an old saying amongst the fighters in the arena, “A retreat is as good as an advantage, especially if your opponent just grew an angel’s arm.”

Harry opened the nearest Door, slammed it shut, and started running. He heard Riddle behind him a second later. There was a sort of town square up ahead. Harry kept running, knocking people out of his way. At the far side of the square was a makeshift bar selling Aqua Regia. Harry jumped on top and kicked the drinkers’ glasses in their faces. A Hellion infantryman lunged at him with his spear. Harry sidestepped him and snapped it in two with the black blade. Thanks, man. Anyone who wasn't sure who he was before, just saw Azazel’s knife and now knew for certain.

“Hello you shit-sucking sulfur monkeys. In case you haven't guessed, I'm Harry Potter and I crawled back down to perdition’s ball sac for just a moment of your time. And if you don't believe I'm Harry Potter, step up closer and I'll take a lot more than a moment from you.”

“Now, I know what a lot of you would like to do to me, but I want you to think about this first: I might be the monster who kills monsters and the biggest bastard in existence, but that's your real enemy right there. The man who followed me here. Look at his arm. He's Chaos. And he's been chasing me all over Creation because he wants me to help him bring a Chaos army down here to turn you into the slaves you refused to be in Heaven. I didn't bring his army, but I brought him. And I'm giving him to you. A New Year’s gift from Harry Potter.”

By then, most of the crowd was fixated on Riddle and his arm. He transformed it to look human, but that just pissed them off even more. They pressed in on him from every direction, It no one wanted to make the first move. Harry picked up one of the Hellion beer mugs and, just when he felt a wave of tension pass through the crowd, smashed it. There was something magical about the sound of breaking glass. Especially around a mob. It worked for both humans and Hellions. If you wanted to start a riot, throw a bottle.

The moment the mug shattered, the crowd surged forward, banshee-howling, crushing Riddle at its centre. Hellion gendarmes were heading toward the square. That guaranteed a full-scale devil’s night party riot. Harry ducked, stayed low, and moved from table to table until he was out of the square. Then he took off running for the Door of Fire.

He made it through and just about had the Door closed when someone grabbed it from the other side.

A skinny Deado adolescent in a uniform Harry had never seen before got as close to the door as he could.

“You killed my Master, Abaddon. I'll get to your world somehow someday, and I'll avenge him.”

“Why don't you come out here and tell me all about it, sweetheart? Oh, wait. You can't come out here, can you? Magic is such a tease. When you figure out how to get yourself on the other side of this Door, be sure to look me up. Until then, stay in school. Say your prayers. And just before you fall asleep tonight, pucker up and kiss my ass.”

Harry pulled the Door of Fire closed. He knew he probably ought to be worried, but he couldn't get worked up about one more Deado who hated his guts.

He stepped out of the Room and into Number 13 Grimmauld Place. Hermione was at the table, scribbling furiously in a notebook. George was showing Neville the correct hand movement for a spell, and Draco sat, glowering at the floor, arms crossed over his chest, in a large squashy armchair. They all looked at Harry.

“If I just did what I think I did, I might have saved the world twice in one night.”

“And Voldemort?” asked Hermione.

“Last I saw, he was being torn limb from claw by a bunch of highly motivated Hellions.”

He looked to Draco, smiling sheepishly at the furious scowl the blonde directed at him. Harry pulled his very best puppy dog eyes and the icy facade cracked just a little.

“And how did you fare?” he asked.

Harry shrugged, “My chest hurts, but I'll be great as soon as I get a cigarette, a drink, and a lobotomy.”


	17. Kill Switch

A few days later it was sunny out, a postcard London afternoon at No Mames. Harry was still not great at paying attention to dates, but he knew it was a Sunday. A perfect day for a date with an angel.

He pushed the wax paper at her.

“Have a taco. A friend told me this place has the best in town.”

“Thank you.”

Anael looked at the taco like he just passed her a dog turd.

“The food’s better at Strange Magic, but you didn't want to meet there.”

“I don't drink.”

“We didn't have to drink.”

“I don't like the smell of liquor.”

“What about all the wine in the Church’s holy magic shows?”

“Wine isn't liquor. It's the blood of our Lord.”

Harry took a sip of coffee. It was hot and good, but good coffee in restaurants kind of depressed him. He always wondered why it didn't come in a cigarette flavour for places where you couldn't smoke.

“Great Britain disagrees, otherwise teenyboppers would ask me to buy stuff for them at twenty-four hour blood stores.”

“This is exactly the kind of talk I'd expect from you.”

“An Abomination?”

“Yes.”

“I'll get you a thesaurus next a Christmas. You need to expand your vocabulary.”

“Some things are beyond description.”

“I thought anyone could get through the Pearly Gates if they repented.”

“No. Not everyone.”

“Maybe I should take back that taco.”

Anael sighed and looked out the window. She’d clearly rather be having lunch in a volcano than sitting there with Harry.

“Not everyone deserves God’s grace, but everything in existence has a purpose and a use. Even the abhorrent. Given that, and following a long debate with my superiors, I've come here to ask you one more time, will you work for the righteous cause of the Golden Vigil?”

“When you ask so nicely, it makes me feel all non-abhorrent.”

“This is your chance to redeem yourself, to erase the foul stench of what you are… if only just a little.”

“Sure. I'll work for the Vigil. But on a freelance basis. And I want to be paid. In cash and in advance. I don't exactly trust holy rollers.”

“You want money for doing God’s work?”

“Yes. A lot of money. You practically have Area 51 tucked away in your warehouse. You can afford it.”

"I didn't think you could possibly be more vile, but you've managed to surprise me.”

“I know. I'm worse than the bogeyman and tooth decay. But the offer still stands. I don't have a business card, but I'm sure you know where to find me.”

Harry took his last taco and took a big bite. It really was good.

“Every day you're alive is like someone spitting in the face of God. I showed you mercy before. You won't get it from me again.”

“You almost killed me.”

“There would be no ‘almost’ had I wanted to.”

She pushed her taco and coffee across the table.

“This food smells like death. I'm sure you love it. I don't think we have anything more to say to each other. I'm leaving.”

“You going to hide and massacre me in the parking lot?”

“It's tempting.”

“No, it's not, and here's why. I went to some people and I traded some things. Got myself a kill switch.”

‘What is that?”

“They have them on trains. Tractors. Some other equipment. It's a button the operator has to hold down for the machine to work. The operator has a heart attack and dies, he lets go of the button. The switch kills the engine and the machine stops. A kill switch.”

“Are you thinking of becoming a train conductor?”

“Better. I'm keeping an eye on this.” Harry took out the small wooden box he had bought the day before, a pyx, and slid it across the table to her. “You know what that is. It's usually for a consecrated host, but I put something better inside. Take a look.”

Anael looked at him for a minute, and then touched the box. Probably doing some angel magic to see if it was poison or a bomb or a poison bomb. Finally, she opened it and looked inside. There was a tiny light on the bottom. So small, a human couldn't see it.

“What is this?”

“Look closer, angel. Don't you recognize it?”

She dropped the box.

“A piece of the Mithras.”

“That's right. A fragment of a fragment. I put the rest in the Room of Thirteen Doors. As long as I'm alive, it's safe. But if you ever run my through with that sword again, the glass holding the Mithras will break and burn its way out through all Thirteen Doors.”

“You're lying.”

“You kill me and I'll torch this whole little puppet show. Then, when Heaven itself is burning, you can explain to your boss how it's all your fault.”

“Even you aren't this mad.”

“There's an easy way to find out.”

Harry put the pyx in his pocket and got up, sliding her taco and his into a paper bag and rolling it closed.

“You don't deserve a taco.”

He left Anael there in the booth with the sun coming through the window, thinking about tacos and the end of everything.

Outside, he dialled Doc Kinski’s number and he picked up.

“Damn. When did you start answering phones?”

“It's a recent and very temporary development. What can I do for you?”

“How's Draco doing?”

Harry had insisted on leaving the blonde with the Doctor while he had his meeting with the winged wingnut. He still didn't trust her not to use the man against him. Plus, Draco’s spirit had been torn up pretty good when Harry had flung him out of the Room and Kinski had offered to sort him out.

“Still a little rough around the edges but mostly smoothed out. Pissed as hell at you, though.”

“Don't suppose you could do some mumbo jumbo to fix that as well?”

“Wouldn't even if I could.”

Harry laughed, “I'll be there in ten to pick him up. And you can fix me up as well?”

“Indeed. See you soon.”


	18. Typical Underachiever

When Harry pulled into the minimall, Kinski and Draco were standing outside smoking. Draco raised an elegant eyebrow as Harry parked the stolen Mercedes SLR McLaren at the rear of the lot, behind a pizza delivery van. The McLaren’s doors didn't open out. They flipped up like insect wings.

Draco dropped his cigarette and ground it out with his boot.

“You couldn't find anything more conspicuous to drive over here? Maybe a blimp or an ocean liner?”

“No one can see it from the street.”

“I suppose.” Draco looked to Kinski, who blew out one last cloud of smoke before dropping his cigarette too and beckoning for them to follow him.

He led them back into the clinic. It appeared to be Candy’s day off but other than that, nothing had changed in the reception area. Even the magazines were sitting exactly where they had been the last time they were there. If it were anyone else’s office, Harry would have guessed that they were a bookie or they were selling dope out the back door.

They waited while the doc washed his hands.

“Take off your shirt and lie down.”

When Harry was on the treatment table, he asked, “You going to use your magic glass rocks on me?”

“Not this time, I'm afraid. This is more of a hands-on procedure. I'm going to have to go in there myself and check things out.”

Harry watched him dry his hands on a small towel covered with pictures of Big Ben. The word London was printed in bright red letters in one corner.

“A ball of fuckwad with a human face ran his hands around inside me. Do whatever you need to do to make sure he didn't fuck me up permanently…well, more...”

The doctor nodded, “Let’s get started.”

Harry suppressed the urge to laugh when Kinski pressed Draco bodily into the waiting chair against the wall. The blonde had been looming, arms crossed and features stormy, glaring at every small motion the doctor made. Draco looked affronted at the action, but kept his mouth shut and stayed put. That done, Kinski took a stoppered bottle from the counter, opened it, and poured something thick, like Karo syrup, in a line down Harry’s chest. Then he took a sponge-headed brush and painted the stuff across his body, from Harry's neck down to his stomach.

He put the brush back on the counter and said, “Tell me when that stuff gets warm.”

“I think it's there already.”

“Close your eyes for a minute.”

Harry closed them and Kinski said, “Feel that?”

“No. Did you already put your hand in my chest?”

“Does it feel like I did?”

“No.”

“Good. Then you're ready. Feel free to keep your eyes closed.”

“Are you going to wear gloves or something, at least?”

“Of course I'm wearing goddamn gloves. I'm not a Neanderthal.”

“Sorry.”

“It's all right.”

There was a slight tugging sensation before Kinski tutted.

“What?”

He hummed, “There is significant damage to the scar-tissue surrounding the Key. The internal bleeding alone would probably have killed you before the week was out.” Draco made a strange sort of yelping cough noise but Kinski ignored him. “It's insignificant. I can fix it.”

Harry tried not to linger on the death comment, “What’s the going rate for magic surgery?”

Another strong tug and a tingle shot through the left side of Harry’s body.

“It's on the house.”

Harry didn't say anything for a minute.

“How the hell do you make a living? You never have any patients and you don't charge me for surgery or for dragging my friends in here. What's going on?”

“You're tensing up. Relax. Every time you move, the bleeding worsens.”

“Okay.”

“And for your information, how I make a living is my business, not yours. As for why I don't charge you, let me ask you a question. Have you ever asked yourself how you survived all those years in Hell? Do you really think you lived with Hellions and survived the arena because you’re that much of a badass?”

“I don't know. I used to think about it, but I could never find any reasons. And I was kind of busy getting my ass kicked, so I stopped worrying about it.”

“Well, you're back and there aren't any monsters chasing you right now. Tell me how it is that you, by yourself, managed to stay alive all those years.”

“I don't know.”

“Guess.”

“I don't know. I'm nothing special.”

“You think so? You feel into the bottom of the cesspool of Creation, survived and crawled out again. Doesn't that sound just a little special?”

“I don't know.”

“He's right, Harry,” Draco interrupted. “I've looked into it. There is absolutely no precedent as to why you are alive, let alone in one piece.”

Kinski nodded, “You do know. A regular person, a civilian, wouldn't have lasted a day down there, much less six years.”

Another strong tugging sensation.

“What does that mean?” Harry asked.

“Maybe it means you're different. Maybe it means that you're not who you think you are. Maybe it means you're not entirely human.”

Harry opened his eyes and looked at him. Not matter how hard he looked and listened, he couldn't read him. Couldn't hear his heart or his breathing. Couldn't get a read from the coin. Nothing.

“I don't like where this is going, doc.”

“Another minute. We’re almost there.”

He closed his eyes and tried to calm his breathing. He didn't like seeing Kinski’s hands moving around under his skin. A hand suddenly lay atop his ankle and Harry sighed, tension bleeding from his limbs at Draco’s soft touch.

“You haven't answered the question. Are you human or not?”

“If I'm not human, what am I?”

“Same as me. An angel not quite fit for heaven or hell.”

Another strong tug.

He felt Kinski lean back. Heard him walk to the sink to wash his hands.

He said, “You can put your shirt back on.”

Harry sat up on the table.

“What did you just say to me, man?” Harry’s attention was on Kinski, but he didn't miss the wide-eyed look of understanding that had overtaken Draco’s face.

Kinski wiped his hands on a towel and said, “It's going to be harder for you than it is for me. I made conscious choices that got me here. Half the universe hated you before you were born.”

He moved slowly, choosing his words carefully. That much Harry could see. He was not high or drunk and he didn't give off a Looney Tunes vibe. Still.

“Put your shirt on. I need another cigarette.”

Harry glanced at Draco and the two followed him back out into the parking lot. The sun hurt Harry’s eyes after having them closed. He watched the doc, looking for any signs of obvious craziness. He could make a break for the Benz, but he was a little woozy from the surgery, and he didn't want to risk Draco in any way.

Kinski was looking at him. He took out a cigarette and offered Harry the pack. He took one.

“If you don't want to hear this, I'm not going to force you. I just thought that maybe you'd like to know who you are, why certain things are going to happen in the future.”

“I'm listening.”

“I'm sure Miss Anael told you about God’s great fuckup at the beginning of time. The thing is, there are other stories regular folks aren't supposed to know about. One is about how in the early days of the world, after what happened in Eden, yet another great fuckup, God sent angels to Earth to look after humans. These angels didn't float around in the sky with big white wings and harps. They lived as ordinary people. Had jobs. Farmed. Fought in wars. All the things regular people do. The only thing they couldn't do was fraternize with humanity. They had to remain apart and aloof so that they could be watchful.”

Harry smoked his cigarette and watched the smog rim the clouds with funny shades of blue and gold.

“The problem with this plan is that you can't take anything, even angels, put them in a human body, give them a human life, and not expect them to start feeling and acting just a little human. Even falling in love. Even having children.”

“The children these angels had with mortal women were called nephilim. There were a lot of them around once upon a time. Now, not so many.”

“Why not?”

“They were killed. So were the angels who fathered them and the mothers who gave birth to them.”

“Why?”

“They had to. There had to be no record, no trace that they ever existed. Most of those doing the killing didn't call the children nephilim. They had another name for them.”

“Abomination.”

Kinski nodded.

“Smart boy.”

“If you're not Doc Kinski, who the hell are you?” Draco asked.

“They took away my real name when they kicked me out of Heaven. Normally, when an angel falls from grace, that angel ends up with other fallen ones in Hell. That would have been too embarrassing in my case. See, I was an archangel. Uriel, the Guardian of the Earth. If they'd sent me all the way down, they knew what would happen. Lucifer would have thrown me a ticker tape parade. God wasn't going to let that happen. So, here I am. I run a little under-the-radar human fix-it shop next to some nice ladies who do other ladies’ nails.”

“What did you do to get kicked out of Heaven?”

“I killed another angel.”

“Why?”

“He deserved it.”

Harry flicked the remains of his cigarette out into the parking lot.

“Can I get another?”

The doc offered him one from the pack. He lit it with Snape’s lighter.

“Did Dumbledore know about this nephilim thing?”

“You mean, did he know what you are? He was a smart man who read a lot of books. He most likely did the math.”

“This is fucking ridiculous. I'm not a goddamn angel.”

“Sure, you're a perfectly normal boy. You were born able to do more magic than most of the wizarding world learn in a lifetime. You survived the Killing Curse. Twice. You survived Hell. You saved the world and you corralled the Chaos. Typical underachiever.”

A skinny kid in a striped shirt and backward baseball cap came out of the pizza joint, carrying a pile of boxes to the delivery van.

The doc nodded toward him. “That kid is smarter than all three of us out together. He's got a car and all the pizza he can eat. What more does a man need?”

He smiled at his own joke. It was the first time Harry had seen him be anything but serious.

Draco cleared his throat, “Say we believe all this, where does that leave Harry?”

The smile faded.

“Not anywhere good, I am sorry to say.” He spoke to Draco, looking at Harry, “He's an Abomination. He’ll always be an Abomination. Hell hates him for being more than a human and Heaven hates him for being less than an angel.”

“No wonder I couldn't get a dare for the Yule Ball.”

“There's something else you need to know.” He looked at his watch, suddenly distracted, “I should call Candy soon. See how she's doing. Called in sick, the poor thing.”

Draco made a non-committal noise and Harry just raised his eyebrows. Kinski sighed, “There's something else you ought to know about the nephilim. Not all of them were killed off by God’s hit squads. Your kind are mostly gone because you tend to kill yourselves. You're not the most stable beings, but I guess you knew that.”

Harry looked at him hard, trying to read him. Wanting a final, for-real take on him. But he was a blank wall.

He smiled at him.

“I know what you're doing. You can't read angels like regular people. Even angels can't always read other angels. Otherwise we would have never had that little dustup with Lucifer in Heaven.”

“Can you read me?”

“Of course.”

“What am I thinking?”

“You're afraid I'm crazy because I'd be one more person you can't count on. And you're afraid I'm telling the truth because that means you were screwed before you ever drew your first breath.”

That was exactly what he was thinking.

“You're also thinking about him,” Kinski nodded at Draco, who was watching the interaction, worrying his bottom lip in a very uncharacteristic fashion. “And he's a big part of this now. You both made sure of that when you cast the bonding spell.”

Harry frowned, “What do you mean?”

“You didn't look into it too closely did you? That spell is designed to bond angelic partners in holy unity. Marriage, essentially.” He grinned at the shocked look the two young men exchanged. “It wouldn't have worked at all if one or both of you weren't at least partially angelic in nature.”

“So what, he and I are married now?”

Kinski’s grin softened, “It's different than human marriage. More complete. You can feel him, right? Your souls are bound to each other, for eternity, in every feasible way. The bond is such that it will follow you even after your deaths. There is no unity more complete than that which the two of you share.”

Draco's eyes swam with a myriad of emotions when Harry looked over to him. He knew Kinski was telling the truth, he felt it. And he was alright with it. Maybe years ago, the idea of being bound to Draco Malfoy would have repulsed him, but not anymore. Quite the opposite, in fact. As Harry looked the blonde man over, his heart swelled with the fierce protective love, the emotion he had been feeling for his friend, that he had grown accustomed to even during his time in the Underworld. It was a love worth dying for and, more importantly, it was a love worth coming back for. He held Draco's gaze for a long moment, trying to convey his acceptance of the new information to the blonde. Words, and perhaps actions, would have to come later. He forced himself to look away and refocused on Kinski, who was watching them with a bemused little smirk on his lips.

“Will I be like you? Will I be able to read you someday?”

He shrugged.

“It's hard to say. With nephilim, it's always different. Some are more human and some are almost angels and can do almost anything angels do. You'll know what you can do when you can do it. That's all I can tell you.”

“Let's say I believe this story. Could you fix me up? Make me like a regular person?”

“I wouldn't even try.”

“Why not?”

“You always had magic, but you came into your real power in Hell. You were running wild, not holding yourself back like a nephilim that grew up around humans. You found yourself and accepted what you could do without all the angst and bullshit that they went through. Your living magic died but your true power was born.”

“And what is it I can do?”

“Warrior is the nice word, the traditional word, but that's just a polite way of saying that you're a natural-born killer. You're the monster who kills monsters. I'm not going to drug you up to change that.”

“Even if I wanted to change it?”

“Especially then. How many angels showed up to save the world the other night? Did Anael and her little quilting bee conquer the evil in the realm of Chaos? No. It took a monster to walk between all the forces massed there and to beat them all. No one else could have done that.”

“There were two monsters there,” Harry reminded him.

He nodded.

“Right. Two monsters.”

The pizza delivery boy brought out a second pile of pizza boxes, loaded them into the van, backed up, and headed into the afternoon traffic. He gave them the finger on the way out of the parking lot.

“I can feel a lot of stuff pin-balling around in your head. You want to tell me what you think about all this?”

“If your story is true, then one of my parents wasn't my parent. And one of them fucked an angel. Which one?”

“Why does that matter?”

“It doesn't, but I want to know.”

“Your mother.”

“I thought so. My father was too devoted from what I’ve heard. Mom was pretty and adventurous. Did he know I wasn't his?”

“It doesn't matter. He still raised you.”

Harry filed that away for later. “Are there other nephilim around?”

“It's not like there's a newsletter or anything, but as far as I know, you're the only one.”

Harry chuckled darkly, “I used to worry all the time about fitting in. I guess that ship had always sailed.”

“Try not to sing too many sad songs for yourself. The universe already hates you. Self-pity isn't going to help.”

Whenever the hammer came down in Harry's life, he'd always wondered what his father would do. And he generally did exactly that. But now, he was seeing his mother’s face instead of his father’s. And he was thinking about Draco. And Kinski. And Snape, who wasn't a father, but who had ended up being more of one than any of the other men in his life.

Harry flicked his cigarette butt at a rat that was stalking a couple of pigeons in the parking lot.

“You know what I'm thinking about now?”

Kinski was silent. Draco was staring hard at the ground, his hands shoved in the pockets of his long coat and a crease lining the space between his eyes.

“That you really want a drink.”

Harry grinned at the blonde’s answer, “Yeah, but that's too easy. I always want a drink. Guess again.”

“You're back wondering if I'm crazy or not and leaning toward crazy,” Kinski replied.

Harry nodded and took a few steps in the direction of the Mercedes, extending a hand for Draco to take.

“Actually. I'm not. I'm leaning toward I don't give a goddamn. I'm sick of Heaven and Hell and angels and nephilim and all the rest of it. I know what I was doing there. And no one told me that I'm not who I am. Be a fallen archangel if you want, but leave me out of it. I don't want to be a part of your soap opera. I don't want to be mythological.”

He started back for the Mercedes, but it looked ridiculous to him now. A brain dead cross between a giant grasshopper and a Cubist Corvette. Pulling Draco’s hand, he walked him past the car and into the shadow of a lamppost at the corner of the lot. Kinski watched them go. As they slipped into the Room of Thirteen Doors, just for a second, some annoying part of Harry's brain whispered, _You know that thing that you're doing right now, going from a parking lot to the centre of the universe and out again? That's pretty seriously mythological._

Harry chose to ignore himself in favour of squeezing Draco’s hand. The blonde shot him a concerned look but Harry simply waggled his eyebrows and bit his lip suggestively. Draco rolled his eyes so hard his irises disappeared entirely. Harry laughed and dropped a quick kiss onto his plush pink lips. Draco froze and Harry laughed, yanking the stunned man across the Room and through the Door of Fire. He had a feeling it would lead somewhere a lot more…fun today.

 


End file.
